246 HORSES AKD HOUNDS. 



friend toddling off in that direction, smelt a rat, and, proceeding 

 quietly on his track, overheard the following conversation with 

 the keeper? — "Well, William, did you tickle him a bit?" "No, 

 sir, I missed 'un clean, but better luck next time he comes 

 round." This brother master, being a facetious fellow, used to 

 remark afterwards of his friend's hounds that the Hack bitch 

 zvas the lest hound in the j^cich. 



The gentleman who afterwards succeeded to these same 

 coverts, having got together a new pack of hounds, found the 

 same difficulty at first in making the foxes break covert ; but he 

 adopted a difterent and much more merciful plan. He caused 

 large fires to be lit, and kept burning during the night to scare 

 them away. One of his field having joined Mr. Slowman's 

 hunt was greeted by my old friend in his usual sarcastic man- 

 ner when things did not go to his liking : — " So, I find there is 

 a new plan of making foxes break covert introduced into this 

 part of the world ; they smolce them out r 



If I have at any time when writing of my visit to Mr. Slow- 

 man's country appeared to bear heavily on my old and reverend 

 friend, nothing was really further from my intention. He was, 

 it is true, bigoted to his own pack of hounds, and for this I 

 applaud him. Every man who has a good pack of hounds in 

 Lis own country, with a real sportsman at the head, should stick 

 to them through thick and thin, and be cautious of changing 

 them for new faces and new systems, w^hich often disappoint 

 the hopes of the most sanguine lovers of variety. His was a 

 pack of wdiich any man ought to have been justly proud. 

 Peculiarities he had, it is true, and who has not 1 but this much 

 I am bound to say of him, that he was one of the finest 

 preachers, the best rider, and the most stanch friend to fox- 

 hunting that ever lived in any country, and long, long will it 

 be ere we shall look on his like again. 



The system now pursued with these large woodlands is to 

 hunt them generally once a week, and the foxes fly without the 

 assistance of powder or smoke. The continual changes which 

 almost yearly take place in the management of fox-hunting 

 countries are prejudicial both to the hounds and to sport 

 generally. Men of large fortune are often attracted by the eclat 

 of the thing to take the direction of a fashionable country, 

 ■which they as hastily resign when they find the weight of the 

 burden they have imposed upon themselves. But there the 

 mischief does not rest ; other and perhaps real sportsmen, and 

 men of business habits (for the management of a pack of fox- 

 hounds is a regular business, and requires men brought up from 

 boyhood to that calling, if I may so express it, to be efficiently 



