NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 17 



ipanion paid me the compliment of comparing my situation to 

 that of the poet Moore's at Venice, when Lord Byron and he, 

 looking from their palace windows on some English passers-by 

 on the canal, the latter observed how they would stare if they 

 knew " who was looking at them !" Presently the hounds and 

 the red coats of the servants appeared in the long vista formed 

 by the turnpike road, and I felt my heart beat quicker at the in- 

 spiriting sight, after so long an estrangement ! 



Independently, however, of the charms that a hunting-field 

 always affords me, I had another reason for wishing for a day 

 with Sir Matthew Ridley's hounds. He had lately changed his 

 huntsman, and availed himself of the services of a gentleman 

 whom I had before heard of, as one of some celebrity in the 

 field ; namely Mr. Boag, who had at one time the management 

 of, and hunted, the Doxford, now the Galewood, hounds, now 

 kept by Major St. Paul, of which I shall hereafter have some- 

 thing to say. 



The history, I believe, of Mr. Boag, is this : He is the eldest 

 son of a man of that class in life on which the highest encomiums 

 have been passed by many of the first writers of their day, and 

 which has even been selected as the one in which the greatest 

 share of human happiness was to be found. Men who, as Sir 

 Walter Scott says of English yeomen the class to which I 

 allude are 



" England's peculiar and appropriate sons, 

 Known in no other land. " 



And afterwards in allusion to their patriotism, 



" As men who have their portion in its plenty." 



But Sir Walter is here alluding to times long since gone by; and 

 although their patriotism remains, alas ! their " plenty" is gone, 

 and they appear likely to be swept from off the face of the earth. 

 *?// Boag was swamped in the general wreck ; and with a praise- 

 worthy solicitude for independence of mind, which no ill-fortune 

 can destroy, is now obtaining an honest livelihood as huntsman 

 to Sir Matthew White Ridley. 



But let us turn away from the dark side of the picture, and 

 remind Mr. Boag that necessity made the first sportsman, and 

 will no doubt make many more ; Mr. Boag, however, was bred 

 a sportsman, as the following anecdote will show. His father 

 kept hounds before him ; and as some friends were dining with 

 him one day after hunting, the pedigree of one of the pack was 

 discussed, but none of the party could give it accurately. " Send 

 your sister here " (a girl of sixteen), said the father to one of the 



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