LETTER II. 



SINCE you intend to make hunting your chief 

 amusement in the country, you are certainly in 

 the right to give it some consideration before you 

 begin ; and not, like Master Stephen in the play, first 

 buy a hawk, and then hunt after a book to keep it by. 

 I am glad to find that you intend to build a new- 

 kennel ; and, I flatter myself, the experience that I 

 have had may be of some use to you in building it : 

 it is not only the first thing that you should do, but it 

 is also the most important. As often as your mind 

 may alter, so often may you easily change from one 

 kind of hound to another ; but your kennel will still 

 remain the same ; will still keep its original imperfec- 

 tions, unless altered at a great expense ; and be less 

 perfect at last than it might have been made at first, 

 had you pursued a proper plan. It is true, hounds 

 may be kept in barns and stables : but those who 

 keep them in such places can best inform you, whether 

 their hounds are capable of answering the purposes 

 for which they were designed. The sense of smelling, 

 the odo?'a canum vis, as Virgil calls it, is so exquisite 

 in a hound, that I cannot but suppose every stench is 

 hurtful to it. It is that faculty on which all our hopes 

 depend ; it is that which must lead us over greasy 



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