Canon K/xgsi.ev's Fox-iiuxt. 465 



" The mare stands like a statue, but I can feel her trembling between my knees. Positively he does not 

 see us. He sits down in the middle of a ride, turns his great ears right and left, and then scratches one of 

 them with his hind foot, seemingly to make it hear the better. Now he is up again, and on. 



''Beneath yon fir, some" hundred yards away, standeth, or rather lieth, for it is on dead, flat ground, the 

 famous castle of Malepartius. I know it well ; a patch of sand-heaps, mingled with great holes, amid the 

 twining fir-roots ; ancient home of the last wild beasts. Full-blown in self-satisfaction, he trots, lifting his toes 

 delicately, and carrying his brush aloft, full of cunning and conceit. 



"Suddenly he halts at the great gate of Malepartius; examines it with his nose; goes on to a postern, 

 examines that also, and then another and another. 'Ah, Reineke ! fallen is thy conceit, and fallen thy tail 

 therewith. Man has been beforehand with thee, and the earths are stopped ! ' 



" One moment he sits down to meditate, and scratches those trusty counsellors, his ears, as if he would tear 

 them off, ' revolving swift thoughts in a crafty mind.' He has settled it now. He is up and off, and at what 

 a pace, and with what a grace besides ! 



" Shall I notify ? Shall I waken the echoes ? Shall I break the grand silence by that scream which the 

 vulgar vieiu halloo call ? It is needless ; for louder every moment swells up a sound at which my heart leaps 

 into my mouth, and my mare into the air. 



" And now appear, dim at first and distant, but brightening and nenring fast, many a right good fellow, and many 

 a right good horse. 



"There is music, again, if you listen, in the soft tread of those hundred horse-hoofs upon the springy, vegetable 

 soil. They are trotting now in ' common time.' You may hear the whole Croats' March (the finest trotting-march in 

 the world) played by those iron heels ; the time, as it does in the Croats' March, breaking now and then, plunging, 

 jingling, struggling through heavy ground, bursting for a moment into a jubilant canter as it reaches a sound spot. 



"The hounds feather a inoment round Malepartius, puzzled by the winding of Reineke's footsteps. I can hear 

 the flap and snort of the dogs' nostrils as they canter round me ; and I like it — it is exciting ; but why ! — who can 

 tell .? 



" I cap them on to the spot at which Reineke disippeared. 



''Old Virginal's stern flourishes; instantly her pace quickens; one whimper, and she is away, full-mouthed, 

 through the wood, and the pack after her : but not I. I am not going with them. My hunting days are over. Let it 

 suffice that I have, in the days of my vanity, drunk delight of battle with my peers far on the ringing plains of many a 

 country, grass and forest, down and vale. 



"And hounds and huntsmen are already far ahead — are racing up the Roman road. Racing, indeed; for as 

 Reineke gallops up the narrow heather-fringed pathway, he brushes off his scent upon the twigs at every stride, and the 

 hounds race after him, showing no head, indeed, and keeping, for convenience, in one long line upon the track ; but 

 going, heads up, sterns down, at a pace which no horse can follow. 1 only hope they may not overrun the scent. 



" They have overrun it ; they halt, and put their heads down a moment. But with one swift cast, in full gallop, 

 they have hit it off again, fifty yards away in the heather, long ere the horsemen are up to them ; for those hounds can 

 hunt a fox, because they are not hunted themselves, and so have learnt to trust themselves, and act for themselves, as 

 boys should learn at school, even at the risk of a mistake or two. Now they are showing head, indeed, down a half- 

 cleared valley, and over a few ineffectual turnips, withering in the heart of the wilderness, and then over the brook, 

 while I turn slowly away, through a green wilderness of self-sown firs. 



" Hark! a faint, dreary hallo off the moor above. And then another and another. My friends may trust it, for 

 the clod of these parts delights in the chase like any bare-legged Paddy, and casts away flail and fork wildly to run, 

 shout, assist, and interfere in all possible ways, out of pure love ! " 



The following candid account of a bad bold horseman's first experience of hunting and 

 leaping will appropriately complete this part of my subject : — 



" I am at Milton," writes Charles Sumner, the American statesman (so unfavourably known to this generation of 

 Englishmen), "passing my Christmas week with Lord Fitzwilliam. Here I have been enjoying fox-hunting to the 

 imminent danger of my limbs and neck. That they still remain intact is a miracle. I think I have never participated 

 in anything more exciting than this exercise. After my arrival, I mounted at half-past nine o'clock a beautiful 

 hunter, and rode with Lord Milton about six miles to the place of meeting. There were the hounds, and 

 huntsmen, and whippers-in, and about eighty horsemen — the noblemen and gentry, and clergy of the neighbourhood, 

 all beautifully mounted, and the greater part in red coats, leather breeches, and white top-boots. The hounds 

 II II II 



