5o6 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



on Monday, Dec. 1st, with the Grafton at Stowe-Nine-Churches. 

 Four or five days in London are sufficient to exhaust the 

 resources of idleness for most countrymen. The unaccustomed 

 regularity and solidity of the three meals per diem, the con- 

 tempt accorded night after night to the conscience — I mean the 

 clock of the club smoking-room — the lack of sufficient exercise, 

 and the substitution of yellow fog for clean country air, all tend 

 to undermine rustic manhood as surely and rapidly as London 

 rooms will shrivel flower or plant in a week. A London pave- 

 ment has its studies, and even its episodes — some entrancing, 

 some pathetic, and some, occasionally, comical. It would, I 

 venture to think, add no little to the attraction of the Pelican 

 Club, could they have transported from Bond-street to Nassau- 

 street a little incident of this morning. Two fur-enveloped, 

 frost-rosy damsels met from opposite directions — each with a 

 terrier at her pretty heels, the one English and old, the other 

 Irish and vicious. A furious fight broke out with never a 

 second's warning — and for no reason that I could discern except 

 that the younger dog paid passing gallantry to a third. Both 

 were partially muzzled, and might with advantage have been 

 completely so. But they made noise enough to convey death 

 and glory ; and cleared the pavement effectually — the fair 

 owners dancing round in agony, while their pets raved and 

 fought impotently. Hibernia snatched hotly at her champion, 

 while Britannia after the first scare let her old gladiator take 

 his chance, with buttons, as it were, on the foils. The scene 

 was so funny, and so apropos at the date, that it was plainly 

 nobody's business to interfere. And the wild exhibition of 

 spite did not last long. The combatants of this allegory of the 

 pavement soon parted, with bristles up — neither having bettered 

 his reputation. 



Cold, cold, cold — whether shown in the ruddy beauty of fresh 

 young cheeks, in the touch of nature colouring the prominent 

 feature of more adult visages, in the yellow and blue of the 

 shivering crossing-sweeper, or in the rags and tatters of the poor 

 woman who — never without infant in arms — makes believe to 



