26o THE HUNTING FIELD 



— "Honourable Milksop" — according to the then 

 Cambridge idiom, why the Captain took him at once 

 under his wing — a most prudent proceeding, seeing 

 that it not only increased his own consequence, but 

 prevented any of those illiberal remarks or insinua- 

 tions that an opposition Shabbyhounde might 

 indulge in. The Captain and Julius very soon 

 struck up a dialogue, for Julius was just of the age 

 to rush into indiscriminate acquaintances, and a 

 youth — nay a man — entering a strange hunting field, 

 is very like a fresh boy turned into a school — glad to 

 take up with the first one that speaks to them. Since 

 Mr. Lockhart went down into Leicestershire with his 

 good Uttle "bay horse," and wrote the surprising 

 article on the "Chase," in the " Quarterly Review," 

 people have been rather suspicious of strangers in the 

 hunting field, and many a man has been charged with 

 being a Quarterly Reviewer, whose banker's or whose 

 betting-book has been his only claim to literature. 

 Authorship somehow is not a popular trade in the 

 country. Nimrod was the only author on horseback 

 who could fairly face a hunting field in propria 

 personce. There was no mystery or concealment 

 about him. He went in as Nimrod, and as Nimrod 

 he wished to be known. He even indulged in the 

 lordly privilege of putting " Nimrod " on the backs of 

 his letters. But to our story — the Honourable Julius 

 Milksop is landed in Northamptonshire, and " taken 

 up " by Captain Shabbyhounde, who, riding his best 

 horse, had got his leather breeches on, and looked 

 more like the gentleman, if not more like the fox- 

 hunter than usual. 



After giving the hounds the usual run of the ever- 

 greens about Kelmarsh, and drawing Scotland Wood 

 blank, they trotted away to a cover on some broken 

 ground on a hill side belonging to Sir Justinian 

 Isham, called Blue Devils, or blue something we 

 forget what, when a whimper and the Squire's cheery 



