Scarlet. 243 



shire, will somehow inspire the hope that there may 

 be, in ages to come, 



"Once more a view-holloa from old Oulton Lowe," 



and that, although Will Goodall, on " my good little 

 Emperor," can cheer them no more, the lineal 

 descendants of Yarborough Rallywood may still 

 challenge in Melton Spinney. 



Hunting men will, doubtless, feel the scent sneer 

 most acutely, and for them there is no help ; but we 

 are bound to quote in defence of the hounds the 

 hypothesis of the late Hartley Coleridge, that " what 

 seems to us merely a disagreeable smell, is perhaps to 

 their canine organs a most beautiful poem." Beau- 

 tiful as it may be, both masters and huntsmen have 

 so far been unable to discover, even approximately, 

 the laws on which that " poem" is constructed. Earl 

 Fitzhardinge, after half a century in the scarlet, con- 

 fessed that he had learnt nothing, except in a practical 

 point of view, beyond what the pages of Somerville 

 had told him when a boy. If that was the testimony 

 of one who loved to walk a fox to death, and give his 

 oki^^xy ^^ Well done. Now, that's beatttifiiW as one 

 of the " old Corbet sort," after minutes of puzzling, 

 struck the scent at last ; others, less enthusiastic, may 

 leave the delicate scent problem to some future Isaac 

 Newton of the hunting field. 



Will Goodall said in the last letter, scent in Diffe 

 dated April 8th, we ever received from rent Countries. 

 him, " I can't say that I have observed any very odd 

 peculiarity of scent in any part of our country; as 

 with a N.E. wind, and a rising glass, they will run 

 over any part of it, and catch their fox ; but with a 

 west wind, which has been piercing nearly the whole 

 of this blessed season, we have never had a week's 

 good scenting weather." No one living speaks with 

 more authority than Mr. Farquharson, and he gives 

 us, as the result of his observation, that " there is no 



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