the decision with which our metropolitan customers can arrange. Down by train, so long; with hounds, so long; back by train, so long; and then to breeches-building, book-squaring, flat-catching, or evening parties, as the Fates may determine. We have only just one little amendment to press on this point, and which we are induced to believe would make the rule and regulation of modern stag-hunting complete, viz., that to the published meets of her Majesty's, Baron Rothschild's, and the Surrey staggers, there should be appended a notice, more MELPOMENE: "Doors (of the deer-cart) open at eleven o'clock, and performances commence at ten minutes past precisely." With the Surrey especially, where the free-list is entirely suspended, we think that a British audience is fully entitled to such a courtesy on the part of the management.

In the item of convenience, then, both to master and man, we have tended to show how superior stag-hunting is to fox-hunting, and how this said convenience, rather than Mr. Taplin's humanity, is the chief reason of the numerous fields we find with hounds whose orders are to save and not to slay. On one head, however, this very readiness and opportunity for a run has told against its votaries. The quickness of the start, the provision made for a gallop, and the too-artificial character of the whole thing, has rendered its supporters more or less careless about the genuine hunting and sport. It was lately affirmed in this magazine, by an undoubted authority, Harry Hie-over to wit, that hare-hunters were generally less affected, but yet better sportsmen than fox-hunters. In the very same words, we are sure we may continue, that fox-hunters are less affected, and show much less of the pomps and vanities, but are still far better sportsmen than staghunters.

It sounds a little out of order for one to write down his own theme, but we have been all against the "national" sport so far, and this is a "whole truth" that justice herself must admit.

The scene, so ably depicted by Mr. Davis, is one calculated to test to the utmost the powers of all concerned in it. Deer have frequently been known to run for miles together in view, and when without a favourable opportunity of taking soil, a great distance with hounds right on them. At such a time the pace even for stag-hunting becomes terribly severe; and was the pursued to run till he was fairly pulled down or dropped before his enemies, few horses could live to the finish. It fortunately happens, however, that the good stag generally compromises the take by a bit of a parley until the horsemen can come to his assistance. Otherwise with every hound at him, and a fine line of country before him, the plain fact would but authenticate the ideas of our artist, which lucus a non lucendo, show by not showing all the field beaten clean out of sight. Our print, it should be added, is intended more especially to represent a day with the Royal Hounds,* so that our subscribers may be left to imagine the somewhat incongruous company, "lords, hawkers, and jockeys," dragons, black-legs, and cockneys, who are cramming and nicking to answer our query of "Who's up at the rescue?"

*The deer is sketched from Rob Roy, an importation from Scotland during the days of Lord Kinnaird, and celebrated ever since as a clipper.

THE HANDBOOK OF THE CHASE.

BY THE EDITOR.

(Continued.)

THE HOME COUNTRY.

"Know ye the land where staunch hounds and stout foxca
Are types of the sport we may count upon there?—
A country to follow those two orthodoxes,

The Quorn and the Pytchley-that broth of a pair."
From "THE BRIDE-groom OF ABYDOS.”
(A poem in MS., for want of a publisher).

In a radius of miles surrounding the metropolis of Great Britainno longer relevant, now that time supplies the place of distancethere used to be certain districts, known to the lovers of woodcraft in that capital as the Metropolitan Hunting Countries. By-and-bye no one will have an idea of their limits: how should they? seeing that Mr. Brunel is making provision for a gentleman to carry his horse about at a pace, contrasted with which the best achievements of Childers or Eclipse would be but a snail's gallop. It is hardly worth while catalogueing these at this time of day, or telling of the past glories of the Old Berkeley (we protest against all political allusion here), or the ultra business form of Charley Newman, or the citizenpomp of the courteous sportsman Sampson Hanbury, or-or, in short, any of the worthies of "lang syne." Hunting has been the sport of Cockneydom since the casting of Bow bells-and was so probably long before. Mr. Strut informs us that the Lord Mayor used to keep a pack of hounds, with which he was wont, accompanied by the aldermen, common council, and other civic dignitaries, to disport in Lincoln's-inn Fields, and over the wilds and commons now known as St. James's and May-fair.....As Epping Forest to Mr. Conyers, was Trafalgar-square to the chief magistrate of London a few odd centuries ago....Tempora mutantur-or, rather, the districts within the bills of mortality, have undergone the change. Adjacent to Primrose-hill, where puss used whilom to dwell and colonize, you would now find more hyenas than hares (notwithstanding the Zoological-gardens have fallen considerably out of fashion); and as for riding over the once-famed Harrow country, you might as well go for an airing on a chevaux de frize. There is, indeed, a deuced nice little "cry of dogs" that every now and then give a clipping forty minutes, not a hundred miles from Kensington-gardens-but that's a profound secret; we would'nt name it for any consideration to anybody breathing but yourself, courteous reader. For ourself, when we stand in need of a little woodcraft just to remind us of what playing at hunting might have been ere merrie England was all gardenground, and dames and palfreys did the sylvan-the shadow foretokening dimly what the chase should be-for ourself, in such necessity, we set our faces towards the Sussex coast-a direction they carry you in at an average of about fifty miles an hour, but with the promise to improve these slows. Well, when we desire to do a passage of unpretending rural pastime, we betake us to a cer

tain mountain establishment for hunting the hare in its primæval character, known as "the Brookside," whose locality is hard by the town of Lewes, and whose hunting grounds are portions of those noble downs which sweep the coast from Beechy-head to Brighton. There you have a country where there is nothing to prevent you from being alongside hounds from find to finish, if your nerves are good enough to carry you the pace down the hills, and your horse's lungs good enough to carry him ditto up them. There is a glorious district, "a gentlemanly diggins, and no mistake," as a Backwood'sman, whom bad luck transported to Ireland, once observed of the county of Meath, "a clearing in which the President himself might be proud of being raised: without a tree within sight of the naked eye." But, to be sure, no man with pretension to a soul above buttons will admit that he can endure harriers. They constitute his instinctive abomination: he hates them as fat Jack did "thin potations," and Richard Brinsley Sheridan the hymeneal superstition. He regards it as a condescension when he patronises "the Queen's;" stag following just escapes sporting illegitimacy, and no more. Fox-hunting is his summum bonum: his force of fancy can no further go in search of the sublime than to an acre of gorse, which furnishes an afternoon fox, fated to die at the end of five-and-twenty minutes. Fox-hunting is his specific against "snobbery," that epidemic lately discovered to abound in Great Britain by one" Punch," a great moral Everythingarian. Fox-hunting is to the civilian what a commission in the Household Brigade is to a soldier-it is, in effect, the degree of Bachelor of Arts-rural and récherché: it is the freemasonry of field sports.

For these reasons, and in some instances no doubt for its own sake, it has long been an especial pastime with the élite of our metropolitan amateurs of woodcraft. Like every other institution of social life, it had its parties. When Sampson Hanbury was a suburban Nimrod, the mighty hunters of the city elected him their Magnus Apollo; and when Mr. Delmè Radcliffe was arbiter elegantiarum to the Hertfordshire, the aristocratic division of the capital affected him. Some of them, however, had recourse to Lord Petre, particularly while his lordship hunted the Thorndon-hall country. Surrey used to be the resort of the fast men of the City-in Mr. Haigh's time, for instance; it is now, perhaps, a peg or so lower. Mr. Conyer's was the other way: he was not fast himself-I imagine nor the cause of pace in others. Charles Newman was an undeniable artist: he would have done credit to any country in the world. Mr. Harvey Combe made a sporting name for the Old Berkeley; but they are now of the things that were. It once possessed a district of gigantic dimensions, commencing almost at what may now be called "the stone's end," and reaching to Cirencester; something like eighty miles of length. Moreover, it was the ideal of a fox-hunting country, the cream of grassland, good fencing, and a glorious champaign, with here and there a brook for sifting the field snobs. The name of Oldaker, too, has given it a sort of classic prestige. But most localities that have ever been popular can boast these characters: who names the Surrey of byegone days without thinking of the "Jolliffe," that colonel of eccentric taste in "tiles"-who use to wear a hat which many a "funny" fancier in these times would be proud of for a wager craft? The Brighton railroad now passes over what was the site of his kennel. I

wonder what Roffey says on the matter, in his gossips in the Elysian Fields....

In dealing with our present theme, the Home Country, it will be convenient, however, only to speak of such portions of it as have survived the decline and fall of metropolitan hunting, and confine ourselves to such remaining parts as are still negotiable for those whose taste or necessities compel them to take their woodcraft in the vicinity of London. These I shall treat of in the refaciamento style: relating the experience I have had of them, whereby their general characteristics may be gleaned, and adding so much of their existing positions as may be needful for present information and cindance.

The Hertfordshire country is quite as accessible as any, from the capital, and has many claims to a fair sporting character. It is neither a second Quorn nor another Pytchley, but a sportsman will find it offer him materials for good working runs, if no flying bursts reward his visit. My chief knowledge of it was acquired towards the close of Mr. Delmè Radcliffe's career as master, when I was the guest of that gentleman's very liberal hospitality, and his debtor for much courtesy and kindness. In his day the kennels were at a place called Kensworth-green, about a couple of miles on what used to be the Birmingham road side of Luton. They consisted of a range of buildings of little architectural pretension, but replete with convenience and comfort, having room for a couple of full packs of hounds, stabling for some twenty hunters and hacks, and a very complete little huntsman's box, with a sanctum for the master on occasion. That all was conducted there secundum artem, will be concluded by those who are aware that Mr. Delmè Radcliffe is the author of "The Noble Science," one of the most practical and clever works extant on the modern chase. Beckford wrote a good manual for hunting as it was then, but it relates to a slower amusement than the fox-hunting of these days. The nature of the country may be gathered in this allusion to it in "The Noble Science :"-" To proceed to our consideration of the kind of hound fit for it, I need not say that good shoulders are indispensable to one fit for any; but, beyond all other points in shape and make, I would especially direct the attention of any one hunting Herts, to feet. Though perhaps few-very few, if any-of the provincial countries (and by proviucial I mean all which are not principally devoted to grazing and pasture lands) can boast of greater variety than our country, considering that, in the hedge-greens of Goddesden and Flamsted-indeed, in the whole county to the west of Redbourn-a fox seldom quits grass, and that further below, beyond the stiff clays of Bramingham and Sundon, we have the fine grass vale of Toddington, equalling the best parts of the best countries, and formerly characterised by Mr. Meynel himself as the 'Elysian fields,' still I have said that a great variety exists; and as in all 'give-and-take' with the good will come the bad, so around Kimpton and a great part of the country between the Welvyn and Harpenden roads, and occasionally in other parts, fields are to be found bestrewed with flints as thick as 'leaves in Vallambrosa,' very nearly equalling those in Hampshire." Now here is an accidental epitome of the sort of country the visitor to the Hertfordshire may calculate on a picture that don't improve with age. Every season the face of our island assumes new wrinkles, in a hunt

pox.

ing sense as well as a social-railroads are seaming it like the smallHow they are off for "game" with the Hertfordshire just now, I cannot speak from personal knowledge; they tell me, very well. In Mr. Radcliffe's time it was awfully expensive work: the keepers were paid the Lord knows how much for every fox that was found, which of course was nuts for the varmint, who were pretty sure of an open earth or drain in some quiet nook or other....... The best fixtures of the Hertfordshire hounds are for the most part within easy distance of some station of the North-western Railway-the more's the pity.

More afield, but still in the county of Herts, are the Puckeridge hounds-a right good sporting establishment as now conducted, if a little below the high flavour of its neighbour. It is also under the average of the Hertfordshire country considerably, though it is fair riding, and quite good enough for your "rough and ready" people; and, contrasted with a metropolitan district, of which we shall presently have to speak-Surrey, with its bottomless pits of filth for valleys, and the stone hatchets of its hills-it is Paradise to Purgatory. Gentlemen in difficulties for a day's or week's sport, to whom these presents are addressed, won't care a farthing to be told all about the economy of the Puckeridge-their breed, seed, and generation-neither where the money comes from that keeps them going, nor whither it departs when it is gone. At their head is a thorough sportsman, whether in the field or in the kennel; and those who don't take me on my word will do well. Let them see Mr. Parry in either capacity, and they will be the better for it all the rest of their foxhunting life. There has been a considerable fluctuation among the masters of these hounds since the reign of the great Mr. Hanbury, who was at their head for thirty years. He was succeeded by Lord Petre, a nobleman whose name stands on the most honourable roll of our annals of the chase. His lordship followed Mr. Hanbury in 1831, and continued to hunt the Puckeridge country till 1835, when it fell into the hands of the quondam master of the Forfarshire. It is strictly one of the metropolitan hunting countries, and as such I introduce it here; but it is scarce a locality into which I should counsel the mere pleasure-seeker to follow me. In a rural relation, it is worthy of all praise and support. The farmers are almost all of a right sporting stamp, fond of the fun themselves, and giving all leave and licence to others to do as it seemeth fit to them. I never saw more reckless riding over the tender Ceres than with the Puckeridge, nor so little manifestation on the part of the (supposed) sufferers. But the fields are small, the fences by no means fancy leaps, and the galloping, as a rule, very distressing for horses used to more flattering countries. You have, moreover, a pack, and a man at the head of it, intent on business; and unless you are with them at first, you had better turn your horse's head homewards at once. I had a bad start indeed with the Puckeridge, having commenced with them in Mr. Dalzell's time, who for many seasons had a run of ill-luck. He hadn't the knack of conciliating the natives, and so they bullied his foxes, and he went to loggerheads with them,

My opinion of him in his new capacity in the south was thus expressed at the time: