420 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



your path about once to ten times that you imagine them there, 

 you may ride right up to the pack. For such purpose you must 

 have a handy horse — if possible a Forest horse (no pony, though). 

 Or you may find a variety in being banged against a tree, swept 

 off by overhanging boughs, or plunged into a holly bush. But 

 he must be able to gallop, and be able to stay; he should be 

 ready to change his legs in a moment, and when he plunges 

 into a wet place he should do so with his forelegs advanced one 

 before the other, like a fighter preparing to counter — not like a 

 Leicestershire horse flinging himself shoulder deep into a second 

 ditch. 



Brockenhurst Bridge was the meet of the New Forest fox- 

 hounds on Tuesday — the 8.5 train from Waterloo puttingit within 

 morning reach of the metropolis, whose bricks and mortar have 

 been shed forward by the wayside marvellously during the past 

 decade. Soon will the cold-meat train, of dissipated memory, 

 carry the soldier to his morning parade along a continuous street 

 to Aldershot. And soon even will the seclusion of the New 

 Forest itself be tapped, unless the holiday-ground be kept 

 rigidly guarded against enterprise. The quaint little town of 

 Lyndhurst wears at this time her best apron : welcomes the 

 coming guest with invitation to Apartments and Stabling, by 

 placard on every unoccupied window ; and is busy adding to and 

 improving her existing accommodation. Lyndhurst, indeed, is 

 aiming at becoming a woodland Melton. " She is fair. Beware" 

 — lest her prices grow proportionate. At present she is modest 

 and homely, comely withal. 



Hounds had gone some little distance into the woods to seek 

 their fox, ere I and my mentor reached them among some of 

 the southernmost Inclosures of the country. We were in time, 

 however, to hear the first halloa, to join the first rush, and to 

 find ourselves splashing along a succession of wet rides, with a 

 hundred other people as bent upon galloping as ourselves. 

 There was a capital cry, as was fitting from a pack made up 

 chiefly from the kennels of Milton, Atherstone and Mr. Harding 

 Cox. 



