NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 253 



Walker has a neat and comfortable house within less than a hundred 

 yards of his darlings — no man alive is fonder of his hounds than he is — 

 where himself and Mrs. Walker sojourn comfortably together. His 

 parlour is very neatly furnished, and, as may be supposed, embellished 

 with some of the insig'nia of the chase. Amongst them is a silver hunt- 

 ing horn, the gift of the Earl of Kintore, with an inscription that must 

 be grateful to the feelings of the owner of it, being the testimony of a 

 master to the good conduct of a servant; and also a picture of the bitch 

 Lavish, in chase, a very good likeness of her. She is by Mr. Chalmers' 

 Lucifer, out of Lord Yarborough's Favourite, and the dam of Limner and 

 Lively, by Lord Kintore's Rubicon ; and of Boxer, by the Duke of 

 Buccleuch's Boxer, a very elegant young hound. Walker's wages are 

 a hundred and forty guineas a year, which, with cap money, draft 

 hounds, and other little et ceteras, make up a comfortable income —but 

 not a shilling more than a man is deserving of, who does his duty in the 

 situation in which he is placed, and risks his neck so many days in the 

 year, for the amusement of his employers and their friends. 



I have, I believe, before acknowledged the diflSculty of making parallel 

 of men who shine in the same sphere, neither could I, if disposed to it, 

 compare Walker as a huntsman with Crane, because I never saw the 

 latter in that capacity at all. But I cannot pass over Walker, were it 

 only from the very high character that had been given to me of him by 

 so many, and those well able to appreciate it, previously to my seeing 

 him in the field. Indeed I consider it but justice to give praise where 

 praise is due, and so far from its being injurious to persons in his (Wal- 

 ker's) situation in life, it must have a direct contrary effect — it must act 

 as an incentive to good conduct, if it were only to preserve the good 

 name already acquired. I can in fact here speak from my own personal 



