A TOUR IN 1825, 



embracing accounts of the hounds of 



Sir Thomas Mostyn, Colonel Berkeley, 



The Old Berkeley, Lord Anson, 



Duke of Grafton, The Quorn, 



Duke of Beaufort, Duke of Eutland, 



The Warwickshire, Mr. Nicoll. 



Wearied with the rattling of flints and the cracking of wattled 

 fences, I sent my horses to Oxford on the last day of January, and 

 followed them the next evening. The Duke of Beaufort's hounds 

 were out of the country ; but finding Sir Thomas Mostyn's fixture 

 was Croton Town, twenty miles from Oxford, I ordered a hunter to 

 be led thither in the morning. 



On arriving at the fixture, 1 found that I was once more in the 

 land of sporting, as barouches-and-four, gigs, tired hacks, and 

 clever-looking hunters, seemed to form a phalanx in the road. In 

 short, at least three hundred sportsmen were assembled, and the 

 sight was to me more than beautiful. 



In Aynhoe Park, the seat of Mr. CartwTight, we found a fox, but 

 which, like most other animals who " fare sumptuously every day," 

 was very unwilling to quit his comfortable abode, and hung about 

 this noble domain for at least an hour, when he got away whilst 

 we were at check in the village, and went over that fine vale in a 

 line for Banbury, but there was no scent to hunt him. We after- 

 wards went very quickly off with our second fox for about twelve 

 minutes, when coming to some poor ploughed land all was over for 

 the day. 



Four years have passed over my head since I last saw Sir 

 Thomas Mostyn's hounds, and they struck me as being very much 



