"As a master of hounds Mr. Dalzell unites two qualities so rarely found to exist in the same individual: he is a first-rate rider, endowed with the most invincible patience; no octogenarian ever crawled over a greasy fallow after the jolly dogs with more untiring endurance than he sticks to the last expiring particle of scent that may bring him to his fox. Of all the slavery on earth, none equals that to which a gentleman-huntsman immolates himself-no man alive will do it (that is will persevere in it) unless he be a thorough sportsman. When Mr. Dalzell emigrated five hundred miles into a foreign land, he did not leave his home ignorant of the difficulties he had to meet, or without confidence in the energies he possessed to combat and conquer them. Short as my experience has been, I can feel that his choice has not fallen in a land flowing with milk and honey. I am not to be understood as meaning any want of courtesy to the members of the Puckeridge Hunt; but there are asperities which it would be better for all parties were permitted to soften and decay. The oligarchy of his part of Herts is peculiar: it is in the renters of the soil. I cannot suppose that it is desired to have this portion of the country purely a farmer's hunt, I believe the few extensive farmers who hold the whole, or the greatest part of it, have too much good sense to promote or countenance such a policy. To these, in conclusion, I would more directly apply myself. I am a stranger it is true; but how much more of the game does he see who looks on, than they who hold the cards? Iend no ear to the idle gossip that jealousy engenders, and common report magnifics and fosters. Give the gentleman who has come among you a fair trial; and, admitting no hearsay evidence, be yourselves his jury. The motive and object of his coming entitle him to your consideration and support; I am much deceived if the result of it will not ensure him your esteem and friendship. Heaven knows, his is no sinecure who labours to please any community, however circumscribed may be its circle-Tot rami quot arbores. Look with compassion upon a fellow-creature who has to deal with the bile of half a county. Leave local bickerings and party feuds for petty sessions and vestry meetings; but come to covert side in peace and good-will towards all men. I mean not to exempt one, aspiring to conduct a fox-hunting establishment, from the penalty which attaches to ambition of every description; still, in venturing to plead for a gallant and well deserving sportsman, who for your amusement has undertaken an arduous and expensive office, I leave his case in your hands, with this counsel

"Blame where you must be candid where you can
But be each critic a good-natured man.'"'

Nobody will deny the claim of Surrey to metropolitan connexion, any more than that the Surrey side is not the most aristocratic "side' of the capital. Nimrod visited it, or rather the Surrey hounds, in 1823, when they had been a long while under the direction of Mr. Haigh, a gentleman who was at their head on my first essay with them in 1835. As I have already said, like "the human face divine," time don't improve the face of a country so far as relates to hunting. Now my friend Apperley found riding over it, in his time, anything but being upon velvet, as his opinion thus recorded goes to show. Except Sussex, I never saw, heard of, or was in, a rougher country than Surrey; not a ride is but through the coverts, and the

lanes surrounding them are belly deep in many places. Notwithstanding this, runs are sometimes had in these parts." With this opinion I cordially accord: Surrey is a miraculous place for mud; but I never had an idea of what sort of thing a ride in a scavenger's cart was, till I had a taste of West Sussex. Nimrod calls it an "ungentlemanlike country:" he need not have been quite so nice in his vocabulary. About the period of my first visit to Mr. Haigh and the Surrey, the establishment, by the indignation of Diana, had been selected as the piece de resistance of all the caricaturists in the sporting world: to say nothing of its being the bull's-eye for all the invective ever launched against any contrivance in woodcraft. Thither then, as I went, I couldn't help thinking of the blessing said to be in store for those that expect nothing. I think the place of meeting was Godstone Green, a pretty rural spot; but the mise en scene of the tableau did not please me. The huntsman, Tom Hill, was not a graceful figure; and the first whip was a "wopper," and no mistake. These big fellows rode (of course) big horses, in racing snaffles, with reins not thicker than pack-thread, which had the oddest effect possible. Mr. Haigh, the master, was at the time in his seventy-ninth year, riding only eight stone-and somehow the whole thing was as it were reversed; to be in keeping, the master ought to have changed places with the man. But the "character"of the affair did not end there:

in my notes of that morning's details I find it thus written:

"Mr. Haigh rode an extraordinary, powerful, strapping, bay horse, fit to carry him had he been four times as weighty as he was-and here all the murder about the snaffles was out-this great animal having only an etherial bit between his jaws. That veteran sportsman it seems has two hobbies-and where is the man who has less?a great leaning towards visionary snaffles, and the most unmitigated abhorrence of tobacco. King James himself had not a more rooted antipathy to the 'infernal mandungus.' He expresses his conviction that the puff of a cigar is fatal to scent, and he takes no roundabout method of delivering that opinion to any of the uninitiated that he finds at a cover side with a weed in his face. During the day a man got into trouble at a fence, when the old gentleman rubbed his hands with great glee, and seemed transported with satisfaction. I inquired the reason of my next neighbour, at the moment; who replied, "Oh! he caught that man smoking with the hounds last year, and he'll never forgive him to the hour of his death!""

My reminiscences of the Old Surrey continue in this wise-I was surprised at the gloss these hounds contrived to carry, considering the mud-berths they live half the winter in; and their hill country is out of the frying-pan into the fire, for such a school of spontaneous anatomy, I defy the whole earth to produce. Mr. Haigh told me he had just lost a valuable mare from a wound of a flint in the pastern, which made it necessary to destroy her on the spot. I don't set this down as a matter of record for its singularity, my wonder being how the devil horses ridden over these downs have a leg at all left at Christmas. ..A leash of foxes had been viewed away from Chicken Wood; for Valentine's-day being just passed, the genial influences had drawn them towards their leafy cover. One had been seen to cross the hills for a coppice behind the mill; on the drag of this Giovani we hit, but it was as cold as a dead man's nose, so we once more launched into a woody

island circled by a sea of clauber, passing muster for a cover. My lower habiliments had by this time surrendered all claims to distinction; and if I had been offered all Lombard-street for it, I could not have pointed out where my breeches ended and my boots began. All at once a dozen men from as many different quarters sang out 'tallyho,' to the accompaniment of a storm of hail and rain, which, while it helped to soften the crust of the dirt-pie, turned all the blood in the body into ice. It looked, however, like business; so, thrusting my gloves into my pocket, I spat upon my hands, and girt up my loins like a gentleman. Presently pug bolted, and for a couple of hours or so we ran him up and down one lane, over head and ears and everything in filth-it must have been the same, for two such passages for man and beast never existed in hell or Connaught. We finished after dark, without a kill; but I can aver, of my own knowledge, that had it lasted a very little longer, there would have been a death to record." Kent was never classed among the metropolitan counties; and Essex, although liberally supplied with hounds, is no longer in the category. The glories of the home country-at best never particularly brilliant-are fast on the wane, just at the time we had learnt to be indifferent about it. Mr. Grantley Berkeley used to run into his venison in Russell-square: now the fashion is to wait till after it's cooked, for such achievements in that part of the world. The royal hounds made a point of finishing their runs over the Harrow country at the top of Portland-place-as late as the season before last....It was time we changed the triumphal whoo-whoop procal o procal from the echoes of the New Road, and the ears of those who promenade Regentstreet. All things are good or bad according to circumstances. The wife of parson Adams, the best model of a Christian divine yet attempted by the pen, used to tell her husband it was wicked to talk of religion out of church. To use a common expression, London has now gone out of town: it is not meet it should encounter a pack of hounds on its journey. Anon there will be a close of the metropolitan hunting session-for ever and for aye. This can be a cause neither of regret or inconvenience, since the steam-roads have brought the Quorn, the Belvoir, and the Pytchley to our stable-doors. In return, however, for these good things, let men remember gratitudelet them be considerate and forbearing in their treatment of those blessings of the virgin goddess: let it never be said profanely of those who avail themselves of the green fields of Northampton, and the noble sport of the squire of Sulby

"The pleasure they delight in physics PAYNE."

THE OTTER.

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY E. B. SPALDING.

The march of civilization, population, cultivation, and a few more "nation" advantages of that sort, has given to many of our sports a somewhat anomalous and contradictory character. The stag for example, as the title of the companion plate shows, is hunted to be rescued rather than destroyed; and though, to be sure, the fox is con