THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL. 199 



gentleman in whose hands he well knew they 

 would suffer no harm. 



The pressure of a few friends, who probably 

 believed they were doing him good service, had 

 at length prevailed, and he was forced, as it 

 were, at the point of the bayonet, to adopt 

 their well-meant advice. But it was a trial and 

 a wound to his feelings, the keenness of which 

 Time, that soother of all sores, was ineffectual 

 to heal. 



For two long years this interregnum — a 

 period of constrained inactivity and bondage, to 

 one of his muscular habits — weighed like an 

 incubus on his spirits, and clogged the wheels 

 of his life with the daily want of something 

 he missed, and of something more to do. The 

 tedium, in fact, had become almost unbearable, 

 when one day, as he was leisurely inspecting 

 the blossom on his apple trees and calculating 

 their autumn crop — reckoning his chickens be- 

 fore they were hatched — a surprise aw^aited him 

 for which he was little prepared. 



Six and a half couple of strong young 

 hounds, a draft from the Vine, had been sent 

 to him from Mr. Harry Fellowes, with an in- 

 timation that "they had all passed the dis- 

 temper, and that no better blood had ever 

 tackled a Devonshire fox." "There they stood," 

 said Russell, "alone in my kennel — the greatest 

 beauties my eye had ever rested on — looking 



