A WET, WILD GALLOP 463 



I can pretend to give no list at all adequate of those 

 who hunted on this day or the following. But I venture 

 to suggest the few following names, besides those already 

 mentioned above, viz.: Lord Howth, Admiral Acheson, 

 Sir Reginald Graham, Colonel Martin Powell, Mr. H. 

 Powell, Mr. Thursby, Lady Cantelupe, Misses Heseltine, 

 Mr. and Miss Compton, Miss Glyn, Mrs. Osgood, Miss 

 Rimmer, Miss Phipps, Mr. and Mrs. Miles, Misses Dobby, 

 Mr. and Mrs. Austin, Major Talbot, Major Grant, Captain 

 Standish, Captain Gurney, Captain Bald, Captain Torbin, 

 Messrs Blathwaite, Cazenove, Gosling (2), Horsey, Hulse, 

 Kelly, Kewley, Palk, Percival, Pierrepoint, Walker, Wallis, 

 Wingrove. 



Sporting rather than romantic, surely, have been the 

 attributes of the New Forest during this cold and back- 

 ward spring. Till within a day or two of the advent of 

 May hardly a green leaf broke the brown monotony of 

 wood and heath. The very gorse-bushes had all lan- 

 guished under the winter's cold ; and, for the first time, 

 I suppose, for many a year, proffered no flowery encour- 

 agement to young couples, whose advent is as regular 

 about Eastertide as that of the stranger-sportsman. In- 

 deed 'twas almost sad to mark these newly-joined wanderers 

 in the melancholy forest, nought to cheer them, beyond 

 themselves, save the echoing note of the cuckoo and the 

 throstle. 



In their misfortune we were the gainers. The cool 

 heaven and the wet ground ministered to our require- 

 ments, if it brought a damping influence to bear upon 

 their bliss. While they could no longer recline in 

 absorbing idleness under the shade of the coupled beech- 

 oak near by Rufus* Stone, and learn from the duplicate- 

 tree a fittest moral of conjugal life, we were riding, daily 

 and gaily, to hounds upon a ravishing scent. But while 

 poetry and romance, rightly or wrongly, are not generally 

 supposed to hold a leading place in the average sportsman's 

 mind, few of them fail to welcome the blend apparent in 

 the utterances of their best representative writers — such, 

 for instance, as George Whyte-Melville, " poet, author, 

 sportsman." I am led to this comment by the fact that 



