283 



CHAPTEE XXYL 



HARE-HUNTING. 



Ah ! there she lies ; how close ! she pauts, she doubts 



If now site lives ; she trembles as she sits, 



With horror seized. The wither'd grass that clings 



Around her head, of the same russet hue, 



Almost deceived my sight, had not her eyes, 



With life full beaming, her vain wiles betray'd. 



Having gone througli the pursuit of what are considered the nobler 

 beasts of chase, I now come to that of the hare — a sport which 

 is in the present day much abused and run doAvn, simply from 

 the fact that people are either too blind or too perverse to appre- 

 ciate its beauties. Moreover, there is a species of snobbishness, 

 which afifects to despise harriers, prevalent amongst men whom I 

 may term " would-be " sportsmen, and who wish to be taken for 

 such gluttons over a country, that hare-hunting does not afford 

 scope for the display of their abilities. Such are as far from 

 being sportsmen, in the true acceptation of the word, as a turn- 

 spit is from a fox-hound. I never hear a man affect to despise 

 harriers but I at once set him down as one who neither knows 

 nor cares anything about hunting, and feel that his place is 

 either riding after stag-hounds (carted deer), or the drag, unless, 

 indeed, as is not unfrequently the case, what he says is all 

 bluster and flourish, and he, for his own sake, should never 

 venture beyond where macadam has already made his path 

 straight. It is a strange thing that, although many of our most 

 celebrated masters of hounds — men like Osbaldeston, Musters, 

 Anstruther Thomson, and others, who have earned undying 



