HxiRE-nUNTIXG. 285 



able to beat one who rides merely to liounds ; but in the hunt- 

 ing-field he is sure in the long-run to have the best of them, 

 and will often be going at his ease by the side of the pack, and 

 in a good place, when they have ground to make up for not 

 noting and taking advantage of what hounds are doing. 



Every boy should be entered to harriers, not so much to 

 teach him to ride as to teach him not to ride in the wrong 

 place, and at the wrong time. He will, with hare-hounds, learn 

 to pull his horse up as soon as there is a sign of a check, sit 

 still and hold his tongue — lessons which it is only too evident, 

 in the present day, the greater portion of those who go out have 

 never learnt. 



No doubt I shall have it cast in my teeth that Beckford, 

 our greatest authority on the chase, wrote, " I never was a hare- 

 hunter. I followed this diversion more for air and exercise 

 than amusement, and if I could have persuaded myself to ride 

 on the turnpike road to the three-mile stone and back again, I 

 should have thought I had no need of a pack of harriers." 

 Very true, but he could not persuade himself to do so, and, 

 moreover, he tells us that he was at the pains to breed a very 

 perfect pack of harriers between the slow-hunting harrier and 

 the little fox beagle. " It was a difi&cult undertaking. I bred 

 many years, and an infinity of hounds, before I could get what 

 I wanted ; I at last had the pleasure to see them very handsome, 

 small, yet very bony ; they ran remarkably well together, ran 

 fast enough, had all the alacrity that you could desire, and 

 would himt the coldest scent. When they were thus perfect, I 

 did as many others do, I parted with them." This is the 

 man who would as soon ride six miles on the road as hunt with 

 harriers, who takes such infinite pains to breed a perfect pack 

 of them. No, no, Peter Beckford, parson as you were, that is 

 not the truth ; you would never have thus persevered in what 

 you admit was a bad country for the sport, had you not hked 

 harriers and their work. We, through your book (which I am 

 much inclined to elevate to the place once claimed, with far less 



