200 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



But Lord Kintore inherited this passion for the chase. The 

 fate Earl, his father, was equally as zealous in the field, and had 

 the following compliment paid him by, I believe, one of the 

 Duke of Cleveland's whippers-in, who had seen him oftentimes 

 in the field, when quartered with his regiment at York. " What 

 a nation pity it is," said he, " that that mon was born a lord ; 

 he'd have made a capital huntsman." 



I must now return to the Banff coach a sad falling off from 

 the renowned Defiance ; but, as the day was cold, and part of 

 the ground nearly as high at least so the driver told me as any 

 coach runs over in Scotland, I drove it merely to keep me warm, 

 for such a set of cripples as were put to it, at the first change, it 

 is long since it has fallen to my lot to manage. But I must hark 

 back still farther, and preface the meeting between my noble 

 friend and myself, by a sort of caution, something like " Have a 

 care, Nimrod; don't overrun the scent," conveyed to me in a 

 letter I received from him a short time previously to my arrival 

 in Scotland. It was nearly in these words. "Mind, Nimrod! 

 neither kennel nor stable is what it was the former only what 

 they call in Yorkshire ' a cry o' dogs/ Of myself, also, I may 

 say, t non sum qualis erairf nor have I been myself since a 

 rattler I got over a double post and rail-fence in the vale of Berks. 

 I worked on two months after I got it, and did not quite give in 

 until I could not stand, there being a substance inwardly and 

 outwardly as large as your fist. I went' to Brodie, who probed it, 

 but said, ' You must not let them either cut you for this, or heal 

 It.' Now, although I was enabled last year to go through the 

 roughest day with my hounds, still the discharge has been so 

 great lately, that I am afraid my condition will not be up to my 

 work. The wound, however, suppurated three days after my last 

 Bunting-day, and since that hour, I have not had a moment's 

 pain." 



Now, I am far from being of Cicero's opinion, that, because a 

 man may not be what he once was (see his desponding letter to 

 Marcus Marius, after the battle of Pharsalia), he may not be a 

 very efficient character in the line of life he has chosen, as he 

 now is, and where is the man, at the age of forty, to whom the 

 44 non sum qualis" will not very aptly apply ? I am happy to say, 

 then, that, all things considered hard services by day and by 

 night ; namely, stout foxes in the morning, and foxes' heads in 

 the evening I found my noble friend and patron as I may here 

 call him, looking as fresh and as well, as I should think he him- 

 self could expect. True to his time, as he always is, he was 

 waiting for me in the road, and our meeting was such as between 

 Brothers in soul idolatrous worshippers of the same deity 



