VomvSHTKR ti4r» 



Now all ha\Tiig passM, I'll to Ferrybridge go, 

 Each event of the day at the Club I shall know ; 

 Where bright bumpers of claret enliven the night, 

 And chase far away hated envy and spite. 

 With my, &c. 



Then forgive me, my friends, if you think me severe ; 

 'Tis but meant as a joke, not intended to sneer ; 

 Come, I'll give you a toast, in a bumper of wine, 

 " Here's success to this Club, and to sport so divine ! " 



And the hounds of old Raby for me. 



I arrived at home on the 10th of April, and left it again on the 

 15th for the New Forest. I was to have taken up my old quarters 

 under the hospitable roof of Sir Hussey Vivian ; but he was deprived 

 of the pleasure of receiving a large party of his friends at this time, 

 by being obliged to attend His Majesty in London. I had received 

 many kind invitations from Mr. Nicoll to visit him, and I spent one 

 of the pleasantest weeks of my life under his roof. Here, however, 

 I must pause. Numerous would have been the jokes, countless the 

 anecdotes — for John Ward was with us — that I might have gleaned 

 in those " gay-spent festive nights ;" but all must now be silent. 

 The hand of Death has snatched away one who presided at the 

 feast, and the house of feasting has been a house of mourning. In 

 a few months afterwards, the wife of our kind host and the mother 

 of his nine children died in giving birth to a tenth, and Mr. Nicoll 

 lost what nothing can replace. 



Impatient, however, as mankind are apt to be under calamities — 

 wliich, aftei' all, arc; but the condition of their existence — yet con- 

 trasts give variety to life. Did we never taste what is bitter, we 

 should know nothing of the sweets. Where, then, can there be a 

 greater contrast than between the large rich fields of Leicestershire, 

 and the sterile, heath-clad surface of a Hampshire forest? Not- 

 withstanding this, there is something in a forest which calls to mind 

 pastoral and hunting ages long since gone by, but of course con- 

 genial to the feelings of a sportsman ; and as, according to the 

 doctrine of Aristotle, the love of the beautiful is implanted in us 

 by Nature, every man— sportsman or no sportsman — must feel 

 instinctive pleasure in such a scene as Monday the 16th of April 

 presented to us at the meeting of Mr. Nicoll's hounds. The 



