NOTHING BUT ERRORS. 141 



as to run in a body together, which alone would 

 make them a match for an old wolf when they came 

 up to him, and, by the distraction of numbers, better 

 enable them to escape the charge or drive of a wild 

 boar. And, lastly, on account of a little more ex- 

 pense, they will not maintain in their kennels a suffi- 

 cient number of hounds, nor feed them properly : 

 they halt, in fact, on that leg which makes their 

 whole establishment in vain. I shall see more of 

 this, I continued to myself, yet ; but I allude to it in 

 passing, that when my friends in France read my 

 observations I may take them with me step by step, 

 and, perhaps, at some future time, hear of, if I do not 

 see, an efl&cient pack of foxhounds in the splendid 

 new kennel in course of erection at the chateau. 

 Everything at present is reversed. The best of men, 

 the best of horses, a sufiScient kennel, and the best 

 animals of chase, but nothing approaching to even a 

 moderate lot of hounds ; nothing that can be called 

 a pack ; and no food that can put a hound in con- 

 dition; all foregoing perfections are thus rendered 

 utterly in vain. 



Now, all that the French gentleman has to depend 

 on is the gun ; but the very roguishness and intel- 

 ligent duplicity of his favourite hounds are for ever 

 marring his possibility of a shot by keeping between 



