HUNTING TOURS. 151 



as the coverts are with the foxes, and on a 

 fine day nothing can be more attractive to 

 the fair equestrians who grace the hunting- 

 field with their presence, than an appoint- 

 ment at Burghley House. 



There is a circumstance connected with 

 this country which I consider particularly 

 worthy of remark, concerning which I have 

 on many previous occasions ventured to 

 express a most favourable opinion ; there is 

 scarcely a fox-earth in it — all the foxes are 

 stub-bred. There is no doubt it renders 

 them much stouter and wilder, at the same 

 time they are less prone to go to ground in 

 drains or places of that nature; their habits 

 do not teach them to do so, and I feel con- 

 vinced, if all the earths in those hunts where 

 they prevail were broken up, that it would 

 tend vastly to improve the character of the 

 foxes, and be a means of increasing sport. 

 The kennels have evidently been constructed 

 at various periods, which the different styles 

 of architecture denote. In one part is to be 

 seen the castellated order, or tower, sup- 

 ported by colossal buttresses, capable of bid- 

 ding defiance to gales of even more terrific 

 force than those which prevailed about the 



