NIM ROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 31 



These are words of his countryman, Scott, and proud must he 

 have been of the honourable association. Yet, though Lord 

 Saltoun is a hero fit for the pages of Plutarch, it is not as a hero 

 that I have now to speak of him, but in the milder sphere of 

 private life, as a gentleman, a companion, a sportsman, and a 

 friend. And here he needs neither a Plutarch nor a Scott. Who- 

 ever knows him has but one opinion of him, that he is, in 

 homely language, "one of the best fellows in the world;" and 

 gives the lie to the assertion, that what raises the hero generally 

 sinks the man. Although he was obliged to give up hunting for 

 many years on account of a badly fractured thigh, there is no 

 man fonder of the sport, and no man rode harder than he did 

 over Leicestershire, particularly on his famous horse Spot, which 

 I now have in my mind's eye. But it is not in the field alone he 

 shines ; who can beat Lord Saltoun over the mahogany ? I 

 would go in the diligence from hence to Paris and God knows 

 that would be a high price for me to pay who have an abhor- 

 rence of all such conveyances to hear him sing " The Man with 

 the Wooden Leg." Independently of the humour with which 

 he sings it, the song itself is most irresistibly ludicrous ; and 

 talk of the unities of a poem, I never met with any in which they 

 are better preserved than they are in this. As I received a kind 

 invitation from his lordship to visit him in the summer and enjoy 

 with him the sports of flood and field, I hope once more to hear 

 the adventures of the one-legged man ; and were I not assured 

 that no- praise of mine could add a feather to a plume so full as 

 his, I should think I had already said too much of this illustrious 

 Scotchman. 



Who comes next ? A master of fox-hounds should take the 

 precedence of all others when Nimrod writes, and therefore I 

 introduce to my readers who may not be acquainted with him, a 

 gentleman known in Warwickshire (which county he hunted 

 three seasons in first-rate style) as Mr. Hay, but in Scotland as 

 "Willie Hay," of Dunse-castle ; and if I could but persuade 

 myself to believe with a little addition to it in the doctrine of 

 metempsychosis, or exchange of souls, I should boldly assert 

 that " Mr. Hay" in England, and " Willie Hay" in Scotland 

 could not be the same man. But in what consists the fancied 

 transfiguration? Why the character of Mr. Hay in Warwick- 

 shire and I appeal to my brother sportsmen there, if such it 

 was not was that of a good sportsman, a well-bred gentleman, 

 an agreeable companion ; and that was all. Perhaps he acted 

 the part of the cautious hound on a ticklish scenting day, and on 

 fresh ground, and left it to others to throw their tongues on the 

 hazard ; but this I can say, on my own experience of this highly 



