CHAPTER II. 



OLDEN TIMES. 



"There's many a lad I've known is dead. 

 And many a lass grown old ; 

 And when the lesson strikes my head, 

 My weary heart grows cold. " 



Captain Morris. 



ALTHOUGH the flickering twilight of Hfe may be 

 stealing upon us, and we can no longer follow 

 A Retrospect ^^^ chase, let us not repine, but rather 

 revert with pleasure to the rapturous joys 

 which in bygone days it has afforded us : how, in 

 glancing over the pack, we have been gratified by the 

 shining coat, the sparkling eye — sure symptoms of fit- 

 ness for the fight ; — how, when thrown in, every hound 

 has been hidden ; how every sprig of gorse has bris- 

 tled with motion ; how, when viewed away by the 

 sharp-eyed whipper-in, he stole under the hedge ; how 

 the huntsman clapped round, and with a few toots ot 

 his horn brought them out in a body ; how, without 

 tying on the line, they flew to head ; how, when they 

 got hold of it, they drove it, and, with their heads up, 

 felt the scent on both sides of the fence ; how, with 

 hardly a whimper, they turned with him, till at the 

 end of fifty minutes they threw up ; how the patient 

 huntsman stood still ; how they made their own cast ; 

 and how, when they came back on his line, their 

 tongues doubled and they marked him for their own. 

 As the old woman in the fable regaled her nostrils 

 with the redolence of the dregs of the Falernian wine, 

 so docs the old sportsman cheer his flagging spirits 



