THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 13 



advanced, and drawing, as will be my invariable rule, 

 solely upon facts within my own experience, it will be 

 fresh in the memory of all Hampshire gentlemen, that 

 when the great Mr. Osbaldeston — (and great he certainly 

 and deservedly was, and ever must be held, as a master 

 of hounds) — temporarily removed his splendid establish- 

 ment from Leicestershire into the Hambledon country, 

 with the aid of no less a man than the renowned Sebright, 

 now with Lord Fitzwilliam, to hunt one of the best packs 

 of hounds ever bred, so great was the transition from 

 the verdant vales of Leicester to their antipodes in the 

 good county of Southampton, that, although " the 

 Squire" had good-humouredly threatened the utter 

 extinction of the whole race of Hambledon foxes, each 

 day was but a repetition of " confusion worse con- 

 founded ;" and they very soon abandoned the country, 

 with all the disgust which the proverbial odiousness of 

 comparisons was likely to engender. 



No one will imagine that I can entertain the remotest 

 idea of casting any reflection upon an establishment, 

 the merits of which were beyond the reach of detraction. 

 I have recorded the fact as it stands, only as the 

 strongest proof of my assertion, that a thorough know- 

 ledge of a country and its peculiarities is indispensable ; 

 and I have not the least doubt that if any of the prin- 

 cipal actors in the scene to which I have alluded were 

 questioned as to what they did in the Hambledon 



