470 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



I can tell you no more, nor would I if I could see the paper, or 

 were publishers' guineas piled on it by the score this night. But 

 they ran back to the very " place where the old horse died," and 

 blew hounds out of covert just as the gun went. 



THE BATTLE GROUND OF NASEBY. 



The feeling uppermost in one's mind on Friday evening, 

 December 27, is, Thank God for a good day's hunting. If a 

 man could not enjoy those two cheery days, he was either 

 clumsy, badly mounted, or by nature unappreciative ; and, in 

 the latter case, the sooner he is put to the plough the better. 

 Those runs take more thinking out than I can pretend to give 

 to them to-night, while the cold, stinging breeze still clings to 

 one's eyelids, and but little remains in the after-evening save a 

 sense of drowsy, grateful satisfaction. A long drive (in my 

 case) in the teeth of the wind, " nor'-east, most forbiddingly 

 keen," opened the morning prospect for what was to come, 

 and sent one's blood to innermost recesses, thence, happily, to 

 be brought, coursing and warming, to reanimate every vein. 

 The cold winds of Old England are more piercing in their 

 intensity than all the low figures of Transatlantic thermometer. 

 They cut through you, however well wrapped, in dog-cart or 

 buggy. When I'm a millionaire, a brougham and the morning- 

 paper shall suffice for me. Now I only start out on wheels that 

 I may come home less tired, and that I may get astride old 

 Pegasus without stiffness and without a groan. 



The scene of the day was the highest tableland of England, 

 the battlefield of Naseby and thereabouts — the aneroid of one's 

 blood registering plainly each mile of the climb to the higher 

 level. How good a field came to do justice to the good things 

 of the day you may in some degree judge from the following 

 incomplete and random list. And most of these were helping 

 themselves gratefully to all that came in their way — making 



