NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 185 



who I should think gives little change out of sixteen stone, with his 

 saddle ; but I left Scotland without seeing either of them in the field. 

 Both these gentlemen went soon afterwards to Dunse for a fortnight, 

 and were lucky in seeing four good days' sport with Lord Elcho, and a 

 beautiful burst of thirty-nine minutes with Major St. Paul from a small 

 patch of gorse ; and over part of the same country that we went over 

 from Learmouth-bog, at least up to the Till, which the fox did not choose 

 to cross, but went to ground on the bank of it. 



Nothing gives me a higher opinion of a man than that sort of unaffected 

 openheartedness which lets you as it were into his character almost at 

 first sight. This is eminently conspicuous in Mr. Adam Hay, and your 

 readers will give me credit for the assertion from the relation of one little 

 anecdote. I forget what led to the remark, but it must have been some- 

 thing in allusion to gentlemen leaving town for the country, when the 

 session of Parliament is at an end. " When / was in Parliament," said 

 he, " I read in the Morning Post, that Adam Hay, Esq. had left town 

 for his seat in Scotland. They ought to have said — For his three-leg'd 

 stool in the Bank," 



In a sportsman's diary Sunday is generally a dies non : but this was 



not the case with me to day. For the first time in my life, I submitted 



myself to the discipline of the Scottish kirk. It appeared like putting 



j;he cart before the horse, instead of the horse before the cart, to hear the 



sermon precede the prayers ; and the men all with their hats on looked 



queer to me ; but this matters httle, provided the end be answered. I 



must say I never saw a congregation more devout than this, or a country 



church more full. The style of the sermon, as well as the prayers, was 



extemporary and declamatory, all very well now and then, and always 



2 B 



