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that notice which I am unable to give them, and will only lightly touch on one more, who, although not a resident in the county, I have seen hunt full many a time with them: I allude to John Maher, of Tullamaine, Co. Tipperary, and brother to the late Valentine Maher, M.P., of Melton celebrity. I have not the honour of being personally acquainted with this gentleman, and therefore can speak nothing of my own private knowledge; but this much I can aver, that a friend of mine, who was on a visit with him, for some time after could sing no song but "Oh, had you the luck to be at Tullamaine House!" This is quite sufficient, for, if a man possess that cardinal virtue, true and genuine hospitality, you may be sure his heart is all right. That he rides well and boldly to hounds, I am an eye-witness, having seen him both in England and Ireland. Long may the merry horn cheer his heart, and the pursuit of the wily robber of the hen-roost obtain for him, and all other patrons of the good old sports of our ancestors, health and happiness! and long may they be successful in their oppo sition to the pseudo-humanity of the present day, which blubbers over the death of a fox, yet refuses its mite to starving wretchedness in the streets, wherewithal to save it from death or guilt-which drops sentimental tears over the stricken deer, yet forgets the pale seamstress in her garret, working away her very life in ministering to its vanity, to obtain the bread for which her little ones are crying, but which she has not to give! Let it first feel, and act as if it felt, for its suffering fellow-creatures; and then, and not till then, will its objections to field sports be considered by its hunible servant,

V.

SONNET,

ON THE DEATH OF MR. JOHN PERCIVAL, SURGEON, ROCHDALE.*

BY MAJOR CALDER CAMPBELL.

Youth, love, and hope were his! But death came by
To rive away life's flower, even at its best

And richest glowing 'neath affection's sky;
And now a widow beats her lonely breast
Beside the pillow of his body's rest!

Young Mourner, weep for him, in whose mild eye
No dark ungenial passion ever prest

Unholy dews; thy tears shall meet reply

In mine-for he my bosom's cherished guest
Lived long and well, and memory shall keep

His image there for ever! Thought hath hours
Of slumber, but true love doth never sleep,-
Still wakeful in life's saddest, gayest bowers,
We cease to think, but never cease to weep.

The name of John Percival is not unknown to our readers. At the early age of twenty-two he fell a victim to consumption, leaving a young widow, his bridal having preceded his burial but a few brief weeks. "He was an honest man!"

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In tracing his subject we generally find the historian revelling with peculiar delight in ancient lore, and glorying in such opportunities to display his classical attainments, and do full justice to the work he is upon; the chronicler of the chase, for instance, will lead the reader back, step by step, through the pages of our own early history, thence to the Roman, Grecian, and Persian, with some well applied quotations from Virgil, Homer, and Xenophon, up to "the mighty hunter" himself, or Esau, first and hairiest of huntsmen. Again, the man who chooses the turf as his theme, after inducing us to accompany him through all the grades and deeds of British chivalry-the Eclipse, Highflyer, and Arab eras, to the merry days of king Charles the Second, will, with but little hesitation, proceed to enlighten us as to the chariot racing on the Olympic plains-sunt quos curriculo, &c. Fortunately for such as may have no great taste for antiquities, the present subject requires but little research of this kind from the head or hands of him who attempts to give a true and correct account of its rise and progress; for though a compound of those two ancient, and consequently aristocratic sports, hunting and racing, the union is of but comparatively modern date. How long the steeple-chase may have been practised in Ireland-the parent country is more than I can take upon myself to say, but its introduction on this side of the channel could not have been long previous to the present century: Mr. Blaine, in his comprehensive work, ventures little farther than twenty years back; but I have good authority for stating that it was known full thirty years previous to his boundary line.

By this it must be understood that, though he quotes two or three authors whose writings have reference to drag hunting, or riding after trained scents, no definite description of the steeple-chase is alluded to before 1820, when a match of this kind it is thought might be found in the sporting periodicals of that time.

Of all field sports, hunting is unquestionably the trunk of the tree; it was to the chase the aborigines looked as the chief means of subsistence, and numbers at the present time owe to it "the means

whereby they get their bread," from Mr. Davis, with some hundreds. per annum, wine, house, and establishment, to the red Indian who cooks his venison where he kills it, and by a very summary process converts the skin into a Taglioni. From the branches of this tree we have varieties, which were introduced as hunting softened down from the principal business of life to one of its principal enjoyments; racing, match coursing, pigeon matches, and such like diversions, which are fettered with rules and regulations, and practised for an object beyond the game pursued (if any), are all accompaniments of civilization, and have their origin in a jealousy, a desire of superiority, or a craving for more methodical excitement, which must have been first felt when engaged in the common parent of all-the chase. With these as precedents, it requires but little stretch of the imagination to see what produced the steeple-chase-the very name implies the nature of the sport to the utmost possible extent; and perhaps none of those I have named, racing, coursing, or shooting for prizes, are so liable to the charge of deriving their beginning from pure jealousy, or a desire of proving superiority. In every hunt we are sure to find different opinions as to who is the leading man across country; opinions, the correctness of which, should the parties refuse to exhibit beyond the hunting field, can rarely be satisfactorily proved or collated. But should two men determine to put their merits to the test on a fixed day with hounds, we can easily fancy, in the event of a blank or short running fox, their fixing on some prominent object--a windmill or steeple, for instance-and agreeing to settle the claim to the premiership by a race across the country to it. This was the original and proper steeple-chase, of which the first match I have been able to gather the particulars, took place some time between the year 'ninety and eighteen hundred; and it is something considerably in favour of our subject to be able to name the competitors on this occasion, as they were two of the most fashionable and leading sportsmen of their day. The line of country was from Paddington to Harrow Church (a distance more than double that usually run over at present), and the contending parties, the Honourable Danvers Butler, and that celebrated sportsman, the Honourable Cecil, afterwards Lord, Forester: as may be supposed, it excited considerable interest; and after a good race, Mr. Butler was declared the winner-a triumph which conferred on the vanquished the soubriquet of "the under Butler," much, it was said, to his annoyance.

From that time I cannot learn that any steeple-chase worthy of record took place until the commencement of the present century, when, as we see from the following extract from that both amusing and instructive work, "The Percy Anecdotes," the distance and time in which it was accomplished tally very much with the present period.

"In short, the march of improvement is much too weak a phrase for the meridian of New South Wales; we must there speak of the race of improvement; for the three appropriate and never-failing accompaniments of advancing civili zation in that colony are a race-course, a public house, and a jail.”—Dr. Long's History of New South Wales.

"At Malton races, in 1801, a match was run betwixt two hunters, which should arrive at a given point in the shortest time. They went the distance (four miles) in less than fifteen minutes, and took one hundred leaps in their way, as they crossed the country. Mr. Teasdale was the winner; Mr. Darley the loser, on whom the odds were at starting."

From this time to 1814, it appears that nothing of the kind was in vogue; then, however, a sweepstakes was knocked up, but, as we now and then see at the minor theatres, almost too much play for the money.

"A match of this kind, which created much amusement, took place in April, 1814, between Messrs. Reynoldson, Harbinger, and Duckett, three celebrated foxhunters, for a sweepstakes of fifty guineas each. The ground selected was from Storford, in Hertfordshire, to Coleshill, a distance of twenty-one miles, through a woody country, with other obstacles of rivulets, enclosures, &c. The sportsmen

kept pace with each other the first four miles, when they separated on their different routes, to avoid a rivulet. Mr. Harbinger arrived at Coleshill first, having performed the distance, after many daring leaps, in one hour and nineteen minutes. Mr. Duckett ran the winner closely, and was within three minutes of him; and Mr. Reynoldson, who was supposed to be the best mounted, broke down at a leap."

After an interval of something like another fourteen years, we come to perhaps the heaviest match ever decided across country, and from which period we may fairly consider the steeple-chase amongst the recognised sports of Great Britain. This was the race for 2,000 guineas over Leicestershire, in which Captain Ross challenged the world, and the gauntlet taken up by the late Lord Kennedy; who named Captain Douglas on Radical, a hunter from Mr. Assheton Smith's stable, against his brother captain and brother Scot on Clinker, then the property of Mr. Holyoake, now Sir Francis Holyoake Goodricke. This was at the close of the hunting season of 1826, when Mr. Osbaldeston was at the head of the Quorn, and Leicestershire in the very zenith of prosperity; Mr. Ross too, being, as might be expected from his public challenge, one of the very first amongst the first, and his opponent, almost equally celebrated in the field, though untried in the crack country, made this an event of no ordinary interest. The result, however, proved that the Meltonian had in no way over-rated himself or his horse, as Clinker won without the shadow of a race; still it should be added that Captain Douglas made his debut under very unfavourable circumstances, having met with an awkward fall at a gate, which materially injured, if not altogether spoilt his chance; and Radical, moreover, carrying upwards of a stone more than the winner, his rider being unable to reduce himself to the dandified minimum of Captain Ross. Through the ground for the race being chosen and made known for some considerable time before it came off, there was not a fence in the line, barring timber or water, strong enough to stop a common hack, from the repeated rehearsals the competitors and their friends had over it.

During the same season Mr. Osbaldeston challenged the winner at even weights, for another four miles against his Clasher, and the conqueror of the world struck his colours to "the Squire;" but on this occasion Captain Ross himself took no active part in the struggle, having chosen Dick Christian to represent him in the saddle. As a

wind up to the matching of this year, the two took another pick from their studs; Mr. Osbaldeston laying five hundred to two that with 19lbs. in hand, and mounted on Pilot, he would beat the Captain on Polecat; and the event proved his opinion of the handicap to be "quite correct. It would appear from these two consecutive defeats that the Captain was fortunate in the first instance in meeting with a stranger, or at any rate in not meeting with "the Squire."

In the spring of 1829, what is generally known as the Grand Leicestershire Steeple Chase, the first really open sweepstakes of the kind, took place over the cream of that fine country, from Nowsley Wood to Billesden Coplow. This chase was preceded, a month or two earlier in the season, by two matches: the first won by Captain Ross on his Harlequin, beating Mr. Gilmour on Plunder; and the second (in which Captain Ross again challenged the world), by Plunder, ridden by Mr. Field Nicholson, beating the Captain on Polecat. For the Grand Sweepstakes seven started, and a second time Mr. Nicholson piloted the winner; Sir Harry Goodricke's Magic, beating The King of the Valley, Lazy Bet, Clinker, who ran in as their names are given, and the others without being placed. There was no child's-play this time, as was proved by every horse in the race, but Polecat, falling once at least; the bull-finches indeed were awful, and the couple of brooks of the widest practicable extent; in clearing the last, The King of the Valley covered the extraordinary space of ten yards and a foot-a feat which stands recorded amongst sporting wonders, and one I believe to be unequalled. Captain Becher, afterwards so justly celebrated for his superior abilities in this sport, made his debut on Bantum, which, however, was outpaced in the first mile, and gave Becher a terrific fall; but no one has or had less regard for accidents of this description than the rider of Bantum, as was proved on this day by his going right to the end, though without the ghost of a chance, but merely pro forma, in case his competitor should meet with some mishap, or make some mistake. Break-neck performers we all know have invariably had a tolerably good idea of being handsomely remunerated for pursuing their somewhat dangerous calling, but the winning jockey on this occasion had no reason for quarrelling with his employer, as Sir Harry very generously made him a present of the whole stake.

I may have gone to more than proper length in repeating these twice told and unquestionably old stories, though they will perhaps act as a refresher for the veteran, and be the next thing to a novelty for the rising generation. My grand purpose, however, by so doing was to substantiate another telling argument in favour of the steeple chase. The first heavy match of this kind, one which attracted the undivided attention of the sporting world, was got up by and between no horse-proud or purse-proud London dealers, who might stand in with each other, and engage in it only as a means to advertise the strength of their stables and quicken the sale of their commodity; by and between no cool calculating legs, whose only object was gain, and who might speculate on it in the same business-like manner they would on hazard or horse-racing, prize-fighting or cock-fighting; by and between no hot-headed Welsh Squires, or unknown prov in

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