CHAPTER II 



HARE-HUNTERS OF THE PAST 



Mode of hunting of our ancestors — The Southern 

 hound — Some portraits of old-time sportsmen — 

 The Hon. William Hastings and his estabhshment — 

 The great hall — Parlour — Cats — The oyster - table 

 — The old chapel and its strange uses — One of the 

 lesser gentry — His timbered mansion — Christmastide 

 and its pleasures — Sir Roger de Coverley and his 

 hounds — A hare-hunt with the worthy knight — 

 His stop-hounds — A curiosity in hunting — An 

 Essex squire tempus 1800 — A curio among hare- 

 hunters — Hard drinkers — Somervile's mixture — 

 Anecdote of a Cheshire squire — Old-time harrier — 

 Often hunted fox — Sir Watkin Wynn's pack — Tran- 

 sition from hare-hunting to fox-hunting — Temporary 

 decline of harriers 



Our ancestors, as I have hinted, looked upon the chase 

 of the hare as an operation to be conducted with what 

 in these impatient days would be regarded as an uncon- 

 scionable waste of time. Rising soon after the winter's 

 dawn, they sallied forth with their big, deep-fiewed, 

 deep-voiced, long-eared, Southern hounds — standing 

 some twenty-four or twenty-six inches at the shoulder 

 — and, finding, after some trouble, traces of the hare in 

 its overnight's wanderings, tracked it steadily to its 

 form. They were not allowed to drive it from its seat ; 

 but the quarry, being at length discovered in its form, 

 was pushed off and the hounds laid on, unless, as of 



