114 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



Mim. '* But what shall I do? I want to get to St. Boswell's before 

 the hounds are fed, and it is now ten o'clock, and to-morrow a hunting 

 day." 



Mr. D. " Well here's the Mi-nis-ter*s mare. He'll na want her 

 to-day, and she's getting muckle fat. She'll carry you quite to your 

 leeking." 



It is scarcely necessary then to observe, that in little more than an 

 hour from this time, the Minister's mare and Nimrod were at St. Boswell's, 

 about nine miles from Kelso, the distance being impressed upon my 

 memory by the fact of my having, for the first time in my life, paid ex- 

 actly a penny a mile tollage. The scenery by the road side, however, 

 is more than worth the money . 



I confess I anticipated, beyond a sight of the duke's establishment, a 

 great treat in this visit to St. Boswell's. In the first place, a clever 

 huntsman has ever been an object of my early admiration ; secondly, 

 knowledge, like honey, being picked up a bit here and a bit there, I was 

 very anxious to have an hour or two's conversation with the very cele- 

 brated Williamson, and, as t'.ie poet says. 



" From his lips 



Glean Science." 



More than this; — although, strictly speaking, Nimrod should be a reporter 

 of actions rather than a painter of characters, yet those of public men 

 being public property — " publica materies," as Horace calls them, and 

 few are more often discussed than a huntsman's — I wished to have 



