204 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



but in a new scene and in fresh company, you might be inhabit- 

 ing another sphere. Yesterday's existence has gone up to the 

 clouds — and calls for a moment's thought to bring it down 

 again. Yes, personally, I enjoy raking out the half-burnt ashes 

 and warming myself over their recovered glow. Who knows, or 

 how soon, when the brightness may be dead, and the warmth 

 all wanting ? 



Tis Wednesday night. Let me study the heaven, and the 

 signs. A clear sky, a southerly wind — and an optimist groom 

 pronouncing, after the manner of his kind, " 'osses all well." 

 He rightly deems that there can be no calling him to account 

 before Sunday — when we shall pick out and present him 

 with more thorns than he ever dreamed of for stable per- 

 quisites, and discover for him possibly more passing injuries 

 than he has bandages to treat. (But then the fdus Achates of 

 a writer is but as a relative or intimate of an angry M.F.H., an 

 exponent subject, a whipping block, to " point a moral and 

 adorn a tale," and is certainly no worse than his fellows, except 

 in print.) 



Thursday evening, Feb. 3. — What did you do at Dunchurch ? 

 Let me tell you what we did from Shuckburgh, as far as time 

 will admit — a proviso that must always accompany an account 

 of a Thursday run. The two Warwickshires to-day met within 

 a few miles of each other — on their respective sides of the 

 beautiful Vale. The morning embodied a wild, warm gale, and 

 brought nothing but confusion and discomfort. To hear was 

 impossible, to see was difficult, to retain your beaver a feat of 

 balance and sleight-of-hand combined. At two o'clock Lord 

 Willoughby de Broke took his hounds on to the Welsh Road 

 Gorse near Ladbroke (from which we last year saw so sharp a 

 run) — and half the company went home. " No scent ; save 

 your horse for another day ! " — and so, my gay and noble 

 adviser, you lost the most brilliant run of the season ! 



2.30 p.m. — The gale, now somewhat moderated, blowing 

 towards Shuckburgh, but a rare stout fox, with a point in view 

 and a heart within him, away up the breeze. Forty or fifty 



