NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 79 



also be attributed to the well-known good eye to economy, as 

 well as to a country or a fox, which said Williamson is known to 

 possess. In the kennel are ample accommodations for a four or 

 five days in the week pack, which is the best estimate I can 

 make of its size, with my pen ; and between the stables of the 

 duke's horses and those of the servants, which form two distinct 

 establishments, are at least forty stalls. In fact I counted nine- 

 teen horses in what are called his Grace's stables, and the 

 number of those necessary for servants for four days a week, may 

 very easily be calculated. There is a room in the head groom's 

 house fitted up for the use of the duke, in which a suit of clothes 

 is always kept, well aired, on hunting days ; and, in case of being 

 benighted, there is a bed in which a more fastidious duke than 

 his Grace of Buccleuch might find himself quite at his ease, after 

 a good day's sport. 



There was a stillness about the kennel as I approached it which 

 convinced me that there were no hounds there ; and none there 

 proved to be. " I am too late," said I to myself; "they are fed, 

 and gone out for their walk how unlucky is this!" It, how- 

 ever, proved otherwise ; they were not fed, but were merely gone 

 for a walk down frhe road, with their huntsman and whippers-in 

 on foot, by way of stretching legs, as the term is, for part of the 

 pack had had rather a hard day's work on the yesterday. Now 

 some of my readers the perfectly uninitiated ones of course 

 may be at a loss for a reason why hounds should be seen by an 

 amateur previously to, and not after, their being fed, but if they 

 will apply to John Walker, huntsman to the Fife, he will supply 

 that reason in a very few words. A certain general officer went 

 into his kennel, just after his pack had been fed, and made the 

 following sage remark upon them. " Bless my heart," said he 

 " what a number of these hounds are with pup !" Now, doubt- 

 less, had John Walker been talking to the general on the 

 difficult art of fortification, on the subject of royal bastions, or 

 great guns, he might have made an equally sage observation ; 

 but the fact is, the line of beauty in a hard-feeding hound, when 

 just flogged away from the trough, is sadly damaged to the 

 eye. 



Having deposited the Minister's mare at the Cock and Grid- 

 iron, which is within a hundred yards of the kennel, with orders 

 that she should be well taken care of and fed ; and, furthermore, 

 wishing to avoid the imputation of having ridden the Minister's 

 mare with hounds on the Sabbath, I walked in the direction which 

 the feeder informed me Williamson and his pack had taken, and, 

 in the course of a mile, I met them, in a turn of the road. The 

 sight to myself was a cheering one. Indeed, fifty couples of 



