NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 163 



them, Crane charged them, and got to the hounds. At the first 

 check, he found himself in the custody of two gens d'armes ! 



Perhaps the boldest turn that can be given to oratorical elocu- 

 tion is that called prosopopoeia, inasmuch as it opens tombs, 

 raises the dead, and makes even heaven and earth to speak. The 

 delusion, however, vanishes when the orator becomes silent, 

 and there is no power that can raise poor Crane from the tomb. 

 I wish, however, I could represent him to my readers, as he was 

 represented to me in Fife ; but as I cannot do that, I must be 

 content with progressing quietly with his history, mixed up as it 

 is with that of the Fife hounds. 



Crane commenced as huntsman to the Fife hounds having 

 succeeded Luke, considered very inefficient in the year 1821, 

 and had many trying difficulties to contend with. The amount 

 of the subscription had fallen off; the country was bare of foxes, 

 so much so, as in his first season's hunting to have produced 

 fifteen blank days before Christmas ; and, as a natural conse- 

 quence, the hounds were become slack in the extreme. To 

 almost any man but Crane, these difficulties would have been 

 considered insurmountable ; but having learnt in the service of 

 the Duke of Wellington to consider difficulties as trifles, he set 

 to work, nothing daunted, to overcome them ; and was proceeding 

 rapidly in making his hounds what they ought to be, when a 

 new obstacle presented itself. A few years previous to his 

 entering upon this task, Lord Kintore had made a junction of 

 his kennel with that of the Fife, on condition that he should 

 claim fifteen couples of hounds (of course each party picking 

 hound for hound, in the draft) whensoever he might be disposed 

 to set up another pack for himself. The claim being made by 

 his lordship, was of course another damper, causing a diminution 

 of the subscription ; and Crane was told that he could only be 

 allowed one, instead of two whippers-in, and this is in a country 

 abounding with all sorts of riot. But Crane was neither to be 

 damped nor foiled. He had become attached to the country, 

 still more so to his employers, and so far from being cast down 

 by adverse circumstances, he doubled his efforts to overcome 

 them, and he did overcome them at last. But, as a great 

 admirer of his said to me in Scotland, " one of Crane's eyes was 

 worth two of most other men's, any day in the week, in the 

 field ; and his ear was as true as his eye was quick." 



Crane's career in Fife was brilliant, but unfortunately short. 

 It commenced, as I have already said, in 1821, and ended in 

 1830, when his health became seriously affected ; and during 

 the long frost of that year he died of inflammation of the lungs. 

 But it will be long before his name dies in Fife, or in the other 



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