66

So,

to following him any longer, that is quite out of the question. Our winged steed, though a remarkably good feeder when he can get anything to eat, is proverbially averse to water; so with a sigh, half of relief, half of disappointment, we ejaculate, "What a run they are having!" and turning his head homewards, jog off in that meditative plodding mood which suits so well with the reactionary dulness entailed upon our spirits by the fatigue of past excitement. And now let us beguile the weary way by analyzing the performances of the gentleman we have been following, and the merits of his bay horse. We observed the respectful manner in which the huntsman immediately credited his assurance of having seen the fox, and from this we gather that he is a sportsman, our own eyes have sufficiently convinced us of his claims to being considered a rider (not exactly the same thing), and his whole bearing and demeanour stamped him a gentleman. Ah!" we think, with a sigh of envy, "it is all very well for these rich fellows with coin in both pockets to give anything for their hunters, and then come and cut us all down; but 'tis money makes the mare to go, &c. ;" and we ride on, growling and grumbling because the blind goddess has not showered down thousands, where she has bestowed hundreds, on our ungrateful heads. How false and morbid is all such repining! A large fortune will no more make a man ride well to hounds than it will make him a painter, a musician, or a poet. True, he may buy the materials with his wealth; but colours and easel, pianoforte and music-books, will help him but little in harmony and design: nor would a whole library of rhyming dictionaries, in our humble opinion, enable their confused proprietor" to clothe the heav'n-born thought in breathing lines." although money may purchase horses of all characters and descriptions, black, white, and grey," with all appliances thereto belonging, the treasures of Croesus cannot bestow quickness of eye and energy of frame; nor shall Dives, with all his advantages of position, unfailingly be found to wear his heart in the right place. In short, to use the words addressed by one-himself the hardest of the hard-to a certain millionaire, "Your money won't save you" when pounding is the order of the day, and a dozen of the gamest dare-devils in England are struggling for a start during that lawless five-minutes which spoils a run. Why, that very bay horse, whose performances we have been admiring from the rear, was bought for sixty pounds, and nothing but good keep and fine horsemanship have made him what he is. There are very many more clever hunters than people are apt to imagine, else how are we to account for the same individual going every day in the same place, as is the case with nine good men out of ten, whatever the horses they may be riding, or the prices they may have paid for them? The gentleman whom we have been following has to-day gone well in a fine run; no great proof, it may be said, of sterling qualities either intellectual or physical; and yet a performance from which a man reaps more approbation at the time than for success in many higher pursuits. If it is worth while to do a thing at all, it is worth while to do it well; and in this instance we may add "twere well 'twere done quickly;" and it may fairly be concluded that the ambition of most young men who go out hunting is to be at least as forward as other people. Should the few remarks I may have to make on the purchasing and riding of horses as hunters facilitate and increase the sport of the inexperienced, the old

man's tale will not have been told in vain. One more word with regard to the rich gentleman and his large stud. He gives long prices for his hunters, not only because they are superior animals, but also because he can better afford the money than the leisure to look for these superior animals in different stables. His avocations, if not more important, are probably more numerous than those of his poorer neighbours. Property has its duties; and in these days those duties are generally right well fulfilled, and he buys the article ready-made to his hand, which he has no time to seek out or to mannfacture. If not in one way, a thing must be paid for in another; and if you are unable or unwilling to draw a cheque for £200 in exchange for a certain quantity of muscle, bone, and sinew, clothed in a coat of chestnut, brown, or bay, why you must make up your mind to a good deal of trouble, risk, and occasional disappointment in procuring the same amount of goods, equally sterling in quality, for less than half that sum. Do not suppose you are to be worse mounted than any of them. Keep a good heart, a good eye to hounds, and, above all, a good hold of his head; and with nerve, perseverance, and average luck, take my word for it you will be a queer one to follow, and a bad one to beat! Envy will then say of you, as she now does of your more fortunate friend, "Small thanks to him for going well! look how he is mounted." As if a man could go well unless he were well carried; or as if the riding even a good horse in a good place did not deserve a very fair share of credit! If a man is always close to hounds on a superior hunter, he will be as close as he can get on a moderate one; and the latter, under such a rider, will often be found considerably better than was supposed. But it is with the poor man fond of hunting that I should wish to talk over his stud and his speculations; the man whose price is limited, as is the number of his stalls, and whose object it is to get the largest share of amusement with the smallest outlay of capital. This cannot of course be done without a certain amount of painstaking and trouble-articles people are wondrously averse to expending; but if it is to be a question of hunting economically, or not hunting at all, it is worth while to consider the means by which we may arrive at the former desirable consummation. Some men keep a couple of horses worth perhaps a couple of hundred apiece; and this is no bad plan for those whose circumstances are easy, compared with their position, and whose business may probably prevent their indulging their favourite taste more than twice in the week. Such men are sure to be well mounted; but my reader will probably agree with me in preferring the ownership of more than twice that number at less than half the price. There are two methods by which the man of curtailed means may become possessed of useful and efficient hunters, each of which has its advantages. The one is to purchase old and seasoned horses that know their business, and "use them up," as the slave-dealer in "Uncle Tom" found so convenient a scheme with his negroes; the other is to buy nothing but young, fresh animals, all whose wear and tear is to come, but whose education must of course be provided them by their new master. The former plan I should propose to consider first, as being most suitable to the inexperienced equestrian, who should learn how to ride an old horse well ere he trusts himself with the management of a raw one, nothing-to use the words of a well known and accomplished sportsman-being so injudicious as to put "two young ones together." Nor need we fear that

in buying an old horse we are necessarily buying a worn-out one. The Arabs, we are told, ride their four-footed favourites up to an age seldom or never attained by an English horse; and who that has read the flight of Kenneth and the disguised Saladin, in the "Talisman," but must have risen from those glowing pages firmly impressed with the conviction that even at thirty years of age these coursers of the Desert had lost none of their speed and elasticity? This is the more curious, inasmuch as the Bedouin begins the education of his comrade at a very early period, and, to use his own expression of oriental metaphor, "rides him till his back bends" at two years old. Such an early course of discipline would argue somewhat against a vigorous old age; but it must be remembered that the Arab horse is possessed of sinews like steel, and a constitution like iron; whilst his lord, the most careful as he is the most exacting of masters, is of a spare and lathy frame, and what we should call in our beef-eating country a mere feather-weight, arms, accoutrements, and all! There are now in Leicestershire, to my knowledge, horses nineteen and twenty years old, still as capable of taking and maintaining a front rank place in that flying country as any of their less experienced competitors; and were it customary to be a little more chary of our young material, and, instead of asking them to carry us nicely at five, and brilliantly at six, to defer all severe exertion till eight or nine winters had set their joints and fortified their constitutions, I think we should find ourselves gainers in the long run, both on the score of gratification and economy by such judicious delay.

Old horses take precious good care of themselves in crossing a country, and, warned by many a scratch and bang, will avoid thorns and stubs with surprising adroitness. They are, besides, generally pretty well au fait to the various difficulties they may have to encounter, and are not, in any sense of the word, to be taken in by double ditches and such unlooked-for traps, so fatal to the raking, impetuous, untrained neophyte. At timber, too-especially if they have been ridden by a workman-they are particularly pleasant, that description of fencing being very much a knack, only to be acquired by practice, and demanding comparatively little exertion; but at water, I am bound to confess they are not quite so successful. The horse is an animal possessed of great sagacity, and an instinct nearly as acute as that of the dog. He is, besides, accustomed to be well fed, warmly clothed, and treated like a gentleman, and has a wholesome horror of dirt and discomfort, more especially when connected with cold and wet. As long as he is ignorant of the effects consequent upon a failure he will charge a brook with the utmost gallantry, and his very confidence will take him over in safety. But let some untoward accident but once thwart this triumphant career; let him but once feel himself sinking to the girths in the soft and yielding mire, whilst the chilling element covers his sleek quarters and floats his well-squared tail; in short, let him but once get in-and although he may be extricated without a team of cart-horses, and may endure but little inconvenience or ill-effects from the immersion-he will never forget his degradation; and the next time you call upon him to repeat the same unlucky performance, he will carry you down towards his aversion-should he not refuse to go altogether-with an unwillingness only modified by the docility of his temper and the sharpness of

your spurs.

With this exception, there can be no doubt that, in nine cases out of ten, the good old horse will beat the good young one; and the less his rider excels in that inborn gift called horsemanship, the more will the difference be apparent between the cool hardiness of experience and the rash violence of untrained ignorance. But delightful as may be the mature qualities of a veteran in the field, they are not without their drawbacks in the difficulty of getting him there; and the annoyances in the stable, which are inseparable from unsoundness, demand a patience and forbearance beyond the reach of many an enthusiastic sportsman. It is disheartening to take a friend into the stable the evening before hunting, and desiring your groom to strip Phantom, whilst you remark casually to your critical auditor-"I shall ride the the old horse tomorrow-the best hunter in this country" to see said Phantom shifting uneasily from each one of his supporters to the other, whilst he points the near fore-foot in the attitude of a dancing-master. Your best course under such a trial is to hustle your friend out of the stable to look at your celebrated breed of fowls, guinea-pigs, or pointer-puppies, send Phantom on to the fixture to-morrow, arrive there early yourself, give him a warming round a field before your friend comes up, and never doubt but he will carry you, notwithstanding the near fore-foot, as well as ever he did in his life. Work is the only thing for old horses; let them stand still, and they get day by day more crippled. Ride them gently on the road, but boldly over a country, and you will be agreeably surprised to find "the old horse going sounder than I ever remember him." Veterinary surgeons cannot explain this fact, or if they can are unable to make their solution intelligible to the unprofessional; but that it is a fact every stud groom will bear me out in asserting, nor need I fear contradiction from any one of those good fellows, who love an old fox, old hounds, old horses, old wine-in short, everything old except old women!

(To be continued.)

THE NEW FOREST "MAY FOX;"

OR,

THE "WHOOP" OF OUR HUNTING, TILL THE SEASON TO COME.

66

BY THE AUTHOR OF SCENES AND SPORTS IN FOREIGN LANDS,"

"" EXCURSIONS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA," &c.

Hunting," says an old author, "is the only amusement which entirely divests us of care-the only recreation that is not accompanied by effeminacy-and gives vivacity and pleasure without languor or disgust.'

There are, I believe, few sportsmen who will not admit the above delineation to be perfectly correct as regards the pleasures and advantages attendant on the noble, inspiriting, and manly recreation of the chase the source of health, the prototype of war, the soldier's schoolerst the pastime of chivalry, of princes, and of kings, even from those early times

"When Nimrod bold,

That mighty hunter, first made war on beasts."

The pursuit of the chase appears so congenial to every Briton's taste, that it cannot be matter of surprise, it should be followed with such ardour throughout the length and breadth of the land, or so reluctantly abandoned when

"At last from Aries rolls the bounteous Sun,

And the bright Bull receives him."

In other words, when smiling spring wide spreads her flow'ry mantle o'er the field, with perfumed "scents" o'erruns the drag, bids us whip off, "hold hard," and cry "Enough!"

Everything, however, in its proper time and place; and fox hunting, which, like

"Many other other things, by season, season'd are

To their right praise and true perfection,"

must, at some period or other, inevitably come to a timely end. Dry easterly winds, a cold ungrateful scent, hard unyielding ground, our horses' suffering legs, to say nought of the farmers' sprouting cropsall bids us beware, all warns us that the "ides of March" are past, and that our favourite sport must soon-for a while at least-be set aside.

"Workmen' may now, in the fast thinning field, be seen to doff the scarlet and don their "tweeds;" "coffee-housing," more than any expected sport, becomes now at the oft scanty "meet," the order of the day. The approaching steeple-chase, the farmer's cup, the odds on the Derby, begin then to be by turns vehemently discussed, as-almost hopeless of a drag-we follow from covert to covert, over a country which looks as if 't were "hide-bound," and quite as hard as a turnpike road.

In the "cabinet" as in the "field," hunting is at this season evidently on the wane; and in our daily recorder of passing events, under the head of "Sporting Intelligence," the list of hunting appointments will be found to dwindle down by degrees, and become most beautifully less," till at last the "New Forest Hounds" remain " alone in their glory," in print and in the field.

Across the greensward of this beautiful woodland tract, still flits the shadow of elsewhere departed sport: here, there is yet a chance of some little remaining scent: no dry, baked fallows, or hard, crusty, ploughedup fields, smother here the steaming essence at its very birth, cripple horses as well as hounds, throw out splints from the "young uns"" legs, or martyrize the swollen fetlocks of the more veteran steed, as they rudely clash against the harsh offspring of the labouring plough.

Here:

"Through surrounding fields the sower stalks not,
Nor, with measur'd step, liberal throws the grain;"

for, like the cherubim when requested to take a seat, he hath not " de