1 24 Recollections of the Vine Hunt. 



him, and who bore the historical names of OHver 

 Cromwell Fleetwood, and believed himself to be de- 

 scended from the family of the great Protector's son- 

 in-law ; but this representative of ancient republi- 

 canism died young ; and, from that time to the end of 

 his life, Mr. Mullens was attended by his servant Jem, 

 who afterwards became kennel servant and whipper- 

 in to Mr. John Portal's last pack of harriers, and who 

 could scarcely have failed to be a good one, consider- 

 ing the school in which he had been brought up. 



When I first knew this pack, it was in no respect 

 remarkable. It consisted of ordinary harriers, some 

 neat and some coarse, with three or four heavy deep- 

 mouthed Sussex southerns, which Mr. Mullens ob- 

 tained from some sporting friend near Petersfield, and 

 one dog, named Tyrant, from Sir John Dashwood, 

 looking like a dwarf foxhound, who could run away 

 from the rest when the scent was good, but was of 

 little use when it was bad ; but out of these hetero- 

 geneous materials, with the help of an occasional cross 

 from the smallest of Mr. Chute's foxhounds, Mr. 

 Mullens, by patient and skilful breeding, was enabled 

 to show, during the last years of his life, a pack of 

 harriers as near perfection as can be imagined : small, 

 but powerful, level in height, beautiful in shape, and 

 faultless in work. Mr. Apperly, in one of his articles, 

 selects Mr. Mullens's * Gulliver ' as a model harrier : 

 he was so ; but the same might have been said of his 

 * Woodlark,' and many others in the pack. 



When the pack attained to this excellence, I was no 

 longer resident in the neighbourhood ; but I used to 

 visit it for some weeks every winter, and it was a 

 great pleasure to the old man to meet me with a pack 



