26 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



indifference and neg-lect should prevail in regard to the human race, 

 which has no doubt degenerated within the last century or two, if not 

 within my own time. For the sake of the sporting world, then, I 

 hope the young lady in question married a sportsman, as there could be 

 no doubt of the issue being *' true on the line,"as wesay of good hounds. 



A short time after the appointed hour, Mr. Ridley, who takes great 

 interest in the hounds and is I am told a very popular and pro- 

 mising young sportsman, arrived, but his father, Sir Matthew, was 

 absent from temporary indisposition. Mr. Ridley's manner pleased me ; 

 there was an unaffected open-heartedness about it, and he greeted his 

 friends and brother sportsmen as a master of hounds ought to do. The 

 field was any thing but numerous, and after exchanging a few words 

 with those composing it, he thus addressed his huntsman, " Now, Boag, 

 put on your spectacles*, and let us begin ;" and we soon found ourselves 

 in a cover of great extent, called Horsley-wood — one hundred and seven 

 acres I was told, which the hounds had not as yet been in during the 

 season, and Boag himself never. 



As if by instinct, however, he threw his hounds into a corner of it in 

 which there was a warm drag of a fox, and in less then ten minutes he 

 was on foot. Nor was this the extent of his goodluck, or 1 might rather 

 say of his merit. He got away with his fox in an extraordinary short 

 time, considering the extent of the cover, and the fact of his never 

 having been in it before; but owing to a puzzling check at a gentleman's 

 house hard by, where the pack divided, and a very middling scent, he 



* Mr. Boag- is, what is termed, short-sighted, and wears a pair of extremely light 

 steel-mounted spectacles. 



