i8o CHASE OF THE WILD RED DEER 



the sportsman who has ridden with the hounds, 

 who has participated in the sport, and can follow the 

 line of the chase recounted from moor to moor, from 

 wood to wood, from stream to stream, much interest 

 may be excited by the perusal of the few lines that 

 describe the leading features of celebrated runs. 

 What says Mr Kingsley, in answer to the objections 

 of the uninitiated, that such a sketch of a day's 

 occurrences, written by a sportsman for the satis- 

 faction of himself and his brethren, is ' bald and 

 tame,' ' and nearly as dull as a history book ' ? 

 ' Nay, I never rode with those staghounds, and 

 yet I can fill up his outHne for him wherever the 

 stag was roused. Do you think that he never 

 marked how the panting cavalcade rose and fell on 

 the huge mile-long waves of that vast heather sea ; 

 how one long brown hill after another sank down 

 greyer and greyer behind them, and one long grey 

 hill after another swelled up browner and browner 

 before them ; and how the sandstone rattled often 

 beneath their feet, as the great horses, like Homer's 

 of old, "devoured the plain;" and how they 

 struggled down the hill-side, through bushes, and 

 rocks, and broad, slipping, rattling sheets of screes, 

 and saw beneath their stag and pack, galloping 

 down the shallow glittering river bed, throwing up 



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