NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 219 



I think my brother sportsmen will admit, that a more graphic descrip- 

 tion of the modern hunter could not have been given in fewer words. 

 Mr. Inglis showed me this letter on his file, and said he should preserve 

 it as a guide to his future purchases, although he feared it might be long 

 ere he met with the animal it described. 



The month of December is not the time to see many good hunters in 

 a dealer's stable ; and I have reason to believe, they are pretty quickly, 

 after their arrival in Edinburgh, picked out of these and the other sale- 

 stables, if likely to "do the trick." Mr. Inglis had but a few in his, and 

 those not exactly my sort; but he told me he was on the point of setting 

 out for Yorkshire to procure a fresh lot, that being the county to which 

 he looks for a supply. When on the subject of horses, and their essen- 

 tials, however, he mentioned a fact that surprised me. It was that of a 

 horse which had been hunted thirty-one seasons ; that he was still alive, 

 and at Mr. Ramsay's, of Barnton. We may here conclude one of two 

 things — that he was hunted with harriers or beagles ; or that he be- 

 longed to one of Williamson's **pusilanimous riders*." 



Monday, 8th. — Met Mr. Ramsay again, about ten miles from Edin- 

 burgh, the morning stormy and wild — ^' ventosus" again, as Lord Kin- 

 tore says, with the addition of a driving snow storm, that drove me into a 

 house for shelter, on my road to cover. But by way of amends for this, 

 I saw something as I rode along, to amuse me. I observed a man upon 

 a bay horse, two or three hundred yards a-head of me, which I concluded 

 he was taking to meet the hounds. I observed his horse stop short and 



* Some one was describing a run of a certain extent to Williamson, in which the 

 hounds had run clean away from the field. " Indeed !" said he, "and over that fine 

 country, too ! Surely they must have been mounted on vary indifferent horses, or 

 been vary pu-si-la-ni-mous riders." 



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