COURSING 



'. . . Away with your coursing on IMarlborough Downs 

 where huge hares are seen squatted from a distance, and the 

 sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings are let slip by a 

 Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and ladies, 

 and squires of high and low degree — a pretty pastime enough, 

 no doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it 

 for a moment compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for 

 start of the " auld witch " from the bunweed-covered lea, when 

 the throat of every pedestrian is privileged to cry " halloo — 

 halloo — halloo," and whipcord-tailed greyhound and hairy 

 lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth or bearing, 

 lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to the 

 same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing 

 Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with retro- 

 verted eyes she turns her face to the mountain, and seeks the 

 cairn only a little lower than the falcon's nest. 



' What signifies any sport in the open air, except in con- 

 genial scenery of earth and heaven ? Go, thou gentle Cockney ! 

 and angle in the New River ; — but, bold Englishman, come 

 with us and try a salmon-cast in the old Tay. Go, thou gentle 

 Cockney ! and course a suburban hare in the purlieus of 

 Blackheath ; — but, bold Englishman, come with us and course 

 an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night 

 an old woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as 

 you will with a leash and a half of light-foots, still returns at 

 dark to the same form in the turf-dike of the garden of the 

 mountain cottage. The children, who love her as their own 

 eyes — for she has been as a pet about the family, summer and 

 winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some five years 

 old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle — will scarcely 

 care to see her started — nay, one or two of the wickedest among 

 them will join in the halloo ; for often, ere this " has she 

 cheated the very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at 

 the lang dowgs walloping ahint her, sair forfaquhen, up the 

 benty brae — and it 's no the day that she 's gaun to be killed 

 by Rough Robin, or Smooth Spring, or the red Bick, or the 

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