BKITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



sloth along the ground — spindle-shanked as a lean and 

 slippered pantaloon ! 



" O heaven ! that from oui- bright and shining years 

 Age would but take the things youth heeded not!" 



An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent 

 to the hills — and putting his brown withered finger to his 

 gnostic nose, intimates that she is in her old form behind the 

 dike — and the noble dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and 

 brandished tail, are aware that her hour is come. Plash, plash, 

 through the marsh, and then in the dry furze beyond you see 

 her large dark-brown eyes — soho, soho, soho — halloo, halloo, 

 halloo — for a moment the seemingly horned creature appears 

 to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on 

 her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts — away 

 fly hare and hounds towards the mountain. 



' Stand all still for a minute — for not a bush the height of 

 our knee to break our view — and is not that brattling burst 

 up the brae " beautiful exceedingly," and sufficient to chain 

 in admiration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart ? Yes, 

 of all beautiful sights — none more, none so much so, as the 

 miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed at 

 once, from a seeming inert sod or stone into flight fleet as that 

 of the falcon's wing ! Instinct against instinct, fear and 

 ferocity in one flight ! Pursuers and pursued bound together 

 in every turning and twisting of their career, by the operation 

 of two head-long passions ! Now they are all three upon her — • 

 and she dies ! No ! glancing aside, like a bullet from a wall, 

 she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight course — 

 and, for a moment seems to have made good her escape. 

 Shooting headlong one over the other, all three, with erected 

 tails, suddenly bring themselves up — like racing barks when 

 down goes the helm, and one after another, bowsprit and boom 

 almost entangled, rounds the buoy and again bears up on the 

 starboard tack upon a wind — and in a close line, heel to heel, 

 so that you might cover them all with a sheet — again, all open- 

 mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over 



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