"It may be so; but I doubt it," he observed.

Well, sir, there are still landholders who preserve the deer, both noble and commoners; and with some pecuniary aid, I grant, much may still be done. Exmoor was once a royal forest by nature it is still entitled, and more than entitled to the name. Her Gracious Majesty, who ever delights in the sports and pleasures of her people, only requires to have the question of preserving the wild deer, which there range in their natural liberty, to be fairly brought to her notice, and I doubt me but she would generously assist in the good cause. Many a £100 is granted from the privy purse in aid of country race-meetings; and what is the consequence? six times out of seven some first-rate horse is brought down by a professional, who gallops over the course, while its owner pockets the Royal guineas intended to secure general sport. I witnessed this fact recently at Plymouth it may be witnessed in all parts. The moon is now sinking behind the dark woodlands; I have a long ride on the morrow; and so I wish you a hearty good night."

I may name that this is the second season that Captain West has brought his stag-hounds to hunt the forest. As regards himself, he is a kind and courteous gentleman, and a thorough sportsman, who delights in the chase; and as he has hunted carted deer for several seasons at Bath, and is now about to commence the season at Cheltenham, he has obtained a good and practical knowledge of the instincts of the animal he hunts; and if not as yet absolutely acquainted with the forest (which few men are, who have not passed a life there), he can and does ride to his hounds as well as any man in the field; and he has this year shown better sport than has been shown for years. His pack is in excellent condition, and superior to that of the year past, which is saying much; and his men, as he himself, are all well mounted. Old Sam is a host in himself; and his whip bids fair to follow in his wake.

It is not my desire to touch irreverently on the private incidents which occur in the home of any one; but a touching tale may, without discourtesy, be told of old Sam and a sweet little girl of four years old, the daughter of his master, which caused regret to every member of the hunt. I may name that this little girl's delight was to visit the kennel constantly, under the protection of Sam, as it was Sam's delight to see her there; and a charming picture was it to witness this little girl standing amid the noble pack, ever unscared and unharmed; for, with the natural instinct and high breeding of their race, they loved to be fondled by the infant, and returned her gentle caresses as animals so truly can; while the old huntsman's eye would glisten with delight, to see his fearless little pet in the centre of his hounds. On a recent occasion, however, the little girl had entered the kennel at feeding time, when, having possessed herself of a piece of biscuit, two unruly young ones rushed forward to obtain a share of the prize, and, throwing her to the ground, broke her leg. Happily, she is now well nigh recovered from the accident; but for a time old Sam was disconsolate, and more than once the tear (which fell from a rough though feeling heart) was seen to dim the eyes of the gallant huntsman, when referring to the accident, as, though his want of care had been the cause.

"I have no pain, Sam," said the little girl, when she saw the old man sorrowing, for he insisted on visiting her bed-side; "and," she

G G

would add, "the puppies did not mean to hurt me, I am sure they were only in play."

All this may appear puerile-be it so; it speaks well for the man, and causes one to love the child.

The first week of the hounds' arrival at Dulverton, the "little Melton of the West," is generally a gala week; and, this year, sport and pleasure have to the full been the order of the day. Thursday, the 4th, commenced with a day's racing, and a well-contested steeple-chase; Friday, the annual ball, which was well attended, finishing up with a champagne supper, and home at daylight. An ordinary followed the. races. As regards this I would be dumb; but I have the sports of Exmoor at heart, and trust that each year they may increase in variety and success; but if gentlemen are expected to support the ordinary, it must be so conducted as to enable them to enjoy the courtesies and festivities of life without allowing that which ought to be a feast of glee combined with reason, to be converted by inebriety, and not very chivalrous language, into a bear garden. I do not desire to speak harshly, and much allowance must be made for the excitement consequent on a day's racing with horses, generally speaking, belonging to the neighbourhood; but I fancy I am not far wrong when I say that conviviality and cordial good feeling may be enjoyed, particularly among sportsmen; toasts given, healths drunk, songs sung, and jokes passed; and yet all may be done without excess or inebriety. If such be not the case, that which has been, and ought always to be a joyous meeting, will cease to be, save in memory of the past.

In conclusion, I would observe that the red deer, which probably were formerly dispersed over the whole of England, have for many years past been confined to the north of Devon, and that part of Somerset which abuts upon it; and are at present, with the exception of some stragglers, to be found only in the neighbourhood of Exmoor. The Forest of Exmoor, and the commons appendent upon it, contain about sixty thousand acres of hill, upland pasture, intersected by ravines, and some boggy ground. Surrounding this forest lie the beautiful and extensive woods of Badgery, Culbone, Horner, Dulverton, Hawkridge, North Molton, Bray, and Bratton, which are the resort of the deer, as also the woody ravines which run towards the Bristol Channel. A century has well nigh passed since the first pack of stag-hounds were kept in this county. Since then, Exmoor has been disafforested by act of parliament, and ten thousand acres, in the centre of this tract of land, are enclosed by a high wall; and as the country is better cultivated, some of the farmers become more sensible of the damage done by the deer, and, aided by poachers, have killed them without mercy; so if some pecuniary aid come not from afar to preserve them, the race may become extinct; and with sorrow it will be told to the world that this unique and princely diversion may cease to be known to the sportsmen of England.

Sept. 20, 1854.

There is a Yorkshire tradition that an antiquarian once found his way into a wayside public-house, and enquired, over his bread and cheese, if there were any interesting spots in the neighbourhood. "If you'll just walk into my bit of a field behind, maister," replied Boniface, "I'll show you such an one as you never seed yet.' "Where-where is it?" said our disciple of Sedgwick, as he strode over hedge and ditch, after his host and hasty meal. tree?" was all the answer: "a winner of t' Leger was foaled under "D'ye see yon that tree, by gosh!" If my friend Nathan Nutbrown, the Brawl publican, did not say this, it was just such a thing as he would have said, if he had the chance. He was, in fact, of a most sporting turn of mind, and had, in his homely way, been at everything in the ring. Before he grew fat and puffy, he was not unknown to local fame as a wrestler, as well as an awkward customer with his fists. there was a little stanza current in the village, and generally attriHence buted to Starbuck the schoolmaster, which ran thus:

"Now I'll tell-for his ale makes me chatty

How our Nat is a king among men ;

For he bore off the belt at a statty,

And wallopped Fat Dick and Big Ben."

Starbuck was uncommonly proud of the second line, and did not fail to inform his friends confidentially that the expression he had there employed about Nat came out of the " Homer"a fact which duly impressed them in favour both of the great Greek man, singer and the sung.

The modern Agamemnon who had thus inspired Starbuck's lyre was nearly as great a card in the village as Indigo Inman himself, and had, in fact, been his brother-churchwarden when the memorable anti-Puseyite crusade was planned. He very seldom alluded to the

part he bore in it, leaving his glories to be told at full length by Indigo, and merely adding, by way of comment, with a sort of triumphant chuckle, "I think their tails is down." There was a great deal of cautiousness and sturdy bluntness in his character, which made him a little repulsive to strangers at first sight; but when he had been warmed up by a pewter of his own homebrewed (for he would" have none of your brewers' sickly stuff"), and had got his vein of rough raillery fairly tapped, he was a perfect storehouse of chaff and jokes, and had some sly tale to tell of nearly every one in the village, bar Gilcrux. In this respect he was not unlike the great Sutcliffe, whose

"mother-wit did never hit Till after his pudding-bag."

Habrams suffered heavily in any little passages of words, and always retreated under cover of "You're too 'ard on me, Mr. Nat; you put so much 'ops into it, it 'elps your tongue;' 66 I can't drink baledigestive horgans won't stand it," and so on. He had, indeed, as he expressed it," hoften to draw in my 'orns."

Nat had been under the doctor's charge for a slight attack of delirium tremens, soon after he first went into the public line; but as the "Hare and Greyhound"—the latter an undoubted likeness of the renowned King Cob-which Indigo had painted for him, grew dimmer and dimmer on his sign-post, his head grew stronger and wiser, and a tankard and a half per diem was now his regular allowance. Under this regimen, his metallic nerves quite returned; and it was only on very great occasions that the villagers had ocular demonstration of their belief that "Nat could maist kill a cow at drinking, if he liked." He never alluded to his illness, except to have a little fun at Habrams's expense, who had a terrific job in what he called “clearing out the machine.' "I was off my feed for nigh two weeks; then Doctor clapped the muzzle on for two more," Nat used pathetically to state: "and then he said I might heat hanything, and have hair and hexercise; and I just did heat, I promise you. Not catch me in that starving mess again; and Nanny, too, siding with Doctor like mad, and telling me all the time, it served me right. Talk of blue powder!" he adds, "why, Doctor put enough of it into me to dye half-a-dozen racing-jackets. Never seed such a waste of good stuff." Mrs. Nutbrown, no doubt, knew his age; but he had not been born in Brawl, and whenever he was questioned on the point, he would say nothing, except that he was "five-and-thirty last Havre-seed time." I have no doubt he will give precisely the same reply till the end of his life; and, without looking in his mouth, I should guess him at forty-five. The grey grizzle had but just descended like hoar-frost on his head and whiskers when I first knew him; but they brought no diminution of strength to that fine stalwart mould, which he described, with the most business-like precision, as "five fut eleven by fourteen stun six." "We live well here, sir," was his regular expression to any wayfarer who made any local enquiries; but he might have added, for himself, "We work hard, too." His nominal occupation was the farming of some twenty acres of glebe-land, which he rented of Gilcrux; but his heart was in animal-jobbing. Nothing

came amiss to him, from a thoroughbred horse down to a cinnamon Cochin hen. He would as soon buy one as the other; and if he sold one at a five-pound profit, and the other at a fivepenny one, he was always quite satisfied. "Quick profits is quick profits," was his great commercial axiom; and he seldom kept anything longer than a week. His only journey to London he owes to Indigo, and he could not be kept quiet there; but he must needs try his hand at Tattersall's, and buy a bay blood stallion (which just missed his or Indigo's well-filled waistband as he cleared the ring with a savage bellow) for some fifty pounds. He had solemnly determined to ride it down to shire, and, being well off for saddles at home, had been into fourteen saddlers in succession, trying to get a saddle and bridle out of them at what he called a "margin figure," when he came across some foreigner, and got rid of the animal at a twentypound profit. Indigo was not so fortunate. In despair of getting anything out of a bad metropolitan picture-debt, he had descended on his creditor, and decided to bear off an eleven-and-a-half black pony, with broken knees, windgalls, and crib-biting tastes, &c., and a four-wheel (which would have suited a sixteener), home to Daubersden. No one sitting in that carriage could see anything beyond the pony's ears, but Indigo did not seem to feel his position in the least; and with Nat at his side, and huge rolls of canvas, new stretchers, a pair of cinnamon fowls and a half-lop buck rabbit under the seat, the respected brother-churchwardens swept out of the metropolis through Temple Bar. I fear their language was not altogether clerical, as a blocked-up conductor assailed them with "Now, then, you two fat uns with that 'ere walking-stick between you" (Indigo had no whip), "where are you a-shoving to?" In fact, I have reason to know that there was a regular Agamemnon-broadside directed by Nat on to "Skinny bones," as he contemptuously christened him on the spot. However, the two jogged on very comfortably for twenty miles (Nat indulging in a round with a turnpike man, who attributed his defeat to his slippers), when they slept together at a railway-side inn, and, hoisting the carriage upon a truck, proceeded north next morning in the horsebox, with the pony. Indigo's countenance was so unshorn, and his black pipe so grovelling in the station-master's eyes, that when he put his head out of the horsebox at the final station, that gentleman ordered him to "git out and shove." The gentleman so summoned, as might have been expected, paid his friend a visit in the station before leaving, and bullied him to that degree, by assuring him that he was "a shareholder in the line, kept servants to do his work, and should report him, &c., for impudence," that an apology was extracted; and Indigo (who was about as much a shareholder as I am) drove off home with Nat in triumph.

Nat's bargain with the "foreigneering chap" greatly raised his reputation in the village, but before he had been a day in the society of his Nanny and three boys (she sadly wishes for a girl), he was off another forty miles, and returned in twenty-four hours with a pair of dun ponies, brother and sister, one of which had so much outgrown the other, that their lady owner gave up all her fond curricle hopes for them. They were soon separated for life; for Nat's head seemed to be a regular intuitive register of people who would like the offer