MR, BROOKS'S, OR THE BEX-HILL HARRIERS. 313 



to a joke or two "with the rustics anent certain hares of pro- 

 digious proportions which have since harvest been fattening 

 on their cabbages, we turn towards the fleshpots, not, however, 

 before we learn from our new mentor that these are not quite 

 pure old Southern hounds, though nearly so ; that the blue 

 mottled colour has little to do with the matter, as he once knew 

 a gentleman who had a pack of pure-bred ones entirely white, 

 and that he has a dog, newly come from the north, a badger- 

 pied one, with a cross of the Sinnington in his combination, 

 and, consequently, partly a fox-hound. 



" This second inspection over, we join a real hard-working 

 crew around the groaning board, and find such mighty ale being 

 handed round, as Thomson must have had in his eye when he 

 wrote, — 



Nor wanting is the brown October drawn, 



Mature and perfect, from his dark retreat 



Of thirty years, — 



Ale such as lives alone, in memory of ancient days, and some 

 few houses like unto this. Around the walls hang hunting 

 prints from pictures, such as Sartorius sketched, and our an- 

 cestors delighted in ; and over the wide-spread fireplace, guns 

 which had served to thin stubble and covert, ages ere breech- 

 loading and driving were thought of. Eut at length time is up, 

 our genial host mounts a gelding of arching crest and massy 

 frame that you could almost fancy had leapt bodily out of one 

 of the pictures we have been looking at ; and in his long green 

 coat, broad-brimmed hat, and white tops, carries us in idea back 

 at once a generation, if not more. His son is on a really good- 

 looking chestnut ; the fox-hunting element is represented by a 

 couple of sons of a late well-known M.F.H. There are a 

 dozen or so of others on steeds of all kinds and descriptions, 

 and no end of ' foot-people,' as Dickey Boggledike would have 

 called them ; for be it known the whole village hunts to-day, 

 save and except the parson, whom we see afterwards, spade in 

 hand, getting a footpath across the glebe meadow into order. 



