s NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



privilege which vice as well as virtue can confer ; but the 

 pleasing reflection which I should draw, were I to indulge in the 

 hope that the name of Nimrod may be remembered in Scotland 

 when he who assumes it shall be no more, would arise from the 

 wish that, with that name, one virtue should be associated a 

 proper sense of feeling for the kindness and hospitality he 

 received in it. 



The circumstances that led to my " NORTHERN TOUR" are 

 as follows. All the sporting world know the Earl of Kintore, his 

 social and good-humoured character, his warmth of friendship 

 which knows no bounds, and his enthusiastic love of fox-hunting 

 which I should imagine cannot well be exceeded. I became 

 acquainted with his lordship some ten or twelve years back at 

 Melton, and have since enjoyed his friendship, and partaken of 

 liis benevolence. Now sympathy has been called the mother of 

 friendship and justly so called, for the weight of sorrow is 

 broken by being divided, and no doubt my noble friend sympa- 

 thized with me in my present situation, deprived of the enjoy- 

 ment of a sport he is aware I love nearly as much as he loves it 

 himself. One evening in the month of September, 1834, then, I 

 saw a triple letter lying on my table with the seal uppermost, 

 the impression on which was a fox's head, with the words 

 " Floreat scientia" on the wreath that encircled it. " A sports- 

 man" said I to myself, and, turning the other side uppermost 

 espied " Kintore' 7 in the corner. The purport of the letter was, 

 to convey to me the good wishes of his lordship for my future 

 prospects in life, and to tell me that he thought it might "put a 

 spoke in my wheel" if I were to pass a winter in Scotland, where 

 he could ensure me a welcome reception. 



The pleasure this invitation afforded me, or the feelings it gave 

 I3irth to, I need not take the trouble to describe. My readers 

 will appreciate them ; neither would it have been necessary to 

 observe, considering the auspices under which I was about to 

 appear among them, that I was likely to be most kindly received 

 by my brother sportsmen in the North. A second letter from 

 my noble friend was conclusive of everything. In it he gave 

 me to understand that he should order two horses to be hired for 

 sny use, from a " would-be Tilbury" in Edinburgh, and that they 

 should await my arrival at Dunse, Lord Elcho's head-quarters, 

 by the first week in November ; and from Dunse my future 

 loute was marked out by him. But before I quit the notice of 

 these letters, I must be allowed to mention a fact strongly indi- 

 ;ttive of the habits and character of the writer of them, and 

 affording, in my opinion, an almost unprecedented instance of 

 punctuality in the movements of a person not tied to time, nor in 



