NIMROD'S NOIITIIERN TOUR. 203 



What fates impose, that men must needs abide , 

 It boots not to resist both wind and tide ;" 



But there were no steam-boats when Shakespeare penned tliese Vines. 



In the course of this agreeable hour's chat Mr. Baillie informed me 

 of the singular fact that he was the first master of hounds to send his 

 fixtures to a newspaper. Nor was this all, the proprietor of one 

 attempted to fix him with the charge of twenty-two pounds, for arJverUse- 

 mejits, but failed. The proprietor must have been a slow hand ; for all 

 newspapers have found their account in being the medium of making 

 public the fixtures of various packs of hounds ; and before the practice 

 became so general as it now is, I knew many sportsmen who took cer- 

 tain newspapers solely on that account. Still it would be well if London 

 editors, or their subs, would condescend to throw their eye over these 

 announcements, as it often happens that the fixture is gone by ere the 

 journal reaches the country. Again, we often see the word " to-morrow" 

 to a fixture two hundred miles distant. The space thus occupied might 

 be turned to better account, in the same line of information. Mr. Baillie 

 was likewise the first to introduce into Scotland the celebrated breed of 

 South-down sheep, a flock of which I saw in his grounds, but not near 

 enough to form a judgment of them. And I saw, on another part of 

 his domain, what should be seen on that of every sportsman who can 

 afi"ord the expense of it, I saw some worn-out hunters enjoying the 

 repose of an inactive life, and well fed — without which, and warm sheds, 

 it is more merciful to destroy them. The Laird of Mellerstain has read 

 Virgil : — 



D' 



" Hunc quoque, ubi aut morbo gravis, aut jam segnior annis 

 Deficit, abde domo, nee turpi ignosce senecta;." 



2 D 2 



