NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 237 



field as an amateur. Some high park hurdles, however, presenting- 

 themselves, and none of the field appearing inclined to leap them, Crane 

 charged them, and got to the hounds. At the first check, he found 

 himself in the custody of two gens d'armes ! 



Perhaps the boldest turn that can be given to oratorical elocution is 

 that called prosopopoeia, inasmuch as it opens tombs, raises the dead, and 

 makes even heaven and earth to speak. The delusion, however, 

 vanishes when the orator becomes silent, and there is no power that can 

 raise poor Crane from the tomb. I wish, however, I could represent 

 him to my readers, as he was represented to me in Fife ; but as I cannot 

 do that, I must be content with progressing quietly with his history, 

 mixed up as it is with that of the Fife hounds. 



Crane commenced as huntsman to the Fife hounds —having suc- 

 ceeded Luke, considered very inefficient — in the year 1821, and had 

 many trying difficulties to contend with. The amount of the subscrip- 

 tion had fallen off; the country was bare of foxes, so much so, as in 

 his first season's hunting to have produced fifteen blank days before 

 Christmas ; and, as a natural consequence, the hounds were become slack 

 in the extreme. To almost any man but Crane, these difficulties would 

 have been considered insurmountable ; but having learnt in the service 

 of the Duke of Wellington to consider difficulties as trifles, he set to 

 work, nothing daunted, to overcome them ; and was proceeding rapidly 

 in making his hounds what they ought to be, when a new obstacle pre- 

 sented itself. A few years previous to his entering upon this task, 

 Lord Kintore had made a junction of his kennel with that of the Fife, on 

 condition that he should claim fifteen couples of hounds (of course each 

 party picking hound for hound, in the draft,) whensoever he might be 



