shouldered brutes in the Elgin marbles: no wonder they drove them), I came at last to an open gate, and turning short found myself in company with two or three men in red coats, looking at the neatest pack of hounds in England. "And so they ought to be," I hear the reader exclaim; well, and so they are: level, powerful, and graceful. What can look more like going than eighteen couple of bitches out of the Quorn kennels? But hounds are universally voted a bore, so I must close my raptures with the remark that the hounds looked as if they should go the pace, the horses as if they could, and the men as if they would.

After Nimrod's description of a run over Leicestershire, which written by the best sporting author of the day, was, I believe, touched up by the cleverest reviewer, and illustrated by the most talented artist, it is in vain for an humble pen to attempt to follow in his steps, “non passibus æquis," as he himself would have told us, for verily he was up in Virgil. Vain, then, would it be for me to attempt to describe, as he did, the "lawless burst," the wicked riding, the "Siberian waste of grass," the cracking rails, the submersion of new coats and gallant souls in the Whissendine, which, it would appear, ought to be regularly dragged during the hunting months; the little bay horse whose untimely stop comes home to the feelings of all "de te fabula rarratur;" and lastly, the scream, which frighted the village and hall of Cottesmore from its propriety, and must have called forth a responsive yowling from the denizens of its well-known kennel. Neither can I fall back upon a true and particular account of what happened to me individually, in the first person; for I am again "headed" by the same author, who describes a most courageous character fighting a young horse through the best part of the best run " that had been seen for three seasons," as the writer himself expresses it in his veracious and autobiographical letter to his friend. My exploits and eventual failures would indeed pale before this worthy's account of "how he rode over young M. (I wonder who he was), how he lost his whip and part of his rear-guard in a bullfinch," how he cleared nine yards with the young one, but lighting in a furrow and on a mole-hill narrowly escaped the fate of the illustrious Anti-Jacobite, who fell a victim to the architecture of the little gentleman in black velvet. How he was up and at it again, and after many more deeds of daring and sundry mishaps, is eventually reduced to a stand-still, the young one being completely beat and minus an eye, an accident not confined to Leicestershire, if we may judge by the number of times the same casualty appears to occur in the neighbourhood of Holborn and other parts of London; "There you go with your eye out" being so common a salutation that it seldom or ever induces the person so kindly warned to turn round and look for the missing lumi

nary.

I can only say we had a run, a right good one. I was carried well, and thanks to following those who were of sterner mould than myself, in a most satisfactory place during a greater portion of the time. A fall, with the loss of a stirrup-leather, and a bad turn, chiefly owing to the forbidding appearance of a certain hog-backed style, extinguished my chance for the remainder, but I came up in time to see a most gallant and straightforward fox properly accounted for and eaten; and went back to Melton wonderfully well satisfied with myself and Grey-friar. Pretty

well for a Nogo this! I thought. Besides which, I had met one or two acquaintances, made another by catching his horse, and been cordially and cheerfully invited to dinner by an utter stranger to me, but one of whose hospitality and amiable qualities I had often heard; so that altogether I was what people call well pleased with my day's work, and went to my dressing-room with far different feelings from those which I had experienced in the same locality twenty-four hours before. I was no longer shy of the waiters; I sent for my groom and gave him his orders instead of accepting them from him, somewhat to his astonishment. I felt free of the place; I had actually survived a run in Leicestershire; the fences were not so fearful as I had supposed. People were civil to me; I was going to a pleasant dinner; and, in short, everything was "coleur de rose."

(To be continued).

THE

WHADDON CHASE

HOUNDS.

THE PROPERTY OF W. SELBY LOWNDES, ESQ.

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY G. MORLEY.

Few packs of fox-hounds, we believe, have sooner reached a higher standing for sport and character than that kennel from which we this month take a group of hound, horse, and man, for illustration. First started in a signally quiet and unassuming manner, they have day by day and season after season gradually added to that name and fame which "first principles" presaged for them. The grand secret of this success we take to rest on the whole-heart-in-'em spirit in which they are hunted and managed. Allured into the country by none of the glorious pomp and circumstance of hunting it, or with no other more especial purpose for hounds to lead on to, Mr. Lowndes took to "THE CHASE" with the truest feeling of a sportsman. A native of it, he had no doubt as long wished for the opportunity, as he had studied its capabilities, and now with his hand once in we need not say how heartily we wish him well on with the game.

It is some years since we ourselves have scen Mr. Lowndes in the field; at that time not occupying the position of a M. F. H., but merely as one of the field with that "kindest, best of neighbours," as daughter Constance calls them, Mr. Drake. We well remember the thorough workman-like or true huntsman look of the Whaddon Squire at that time, even to the cap itself-at a period, be it remembered, when all the world, as at present, had not adopted this emblem of the official or the olden time. For our own part we rather question the taste of so general a revival, though we are glad to find Mr. Lowndes with so excellent an argument for continuing the use of his.

Our own knowledge of the country, then, bearing date previous to the establishment of the Whaddon Chase Hounds, we avail ourselves of the later experience of our friend" Gêlert," who has kindly fur

nished us with some further particulars in addition to what he has already published in his "Country Practice." From thence we gather the following history and estimate.

First, as to country-which includes a considerable portion of the Vale of Aylesbury, whose fertile aud extensive pastures nothing can surpass for the noble sport of fox-hunting; but a man must be well mounted if he would cross its deep brooks and double ox-fences, and live with hounds, for they almost fly. Cresslow is the extreme meet on the south side of Mr. Lowndes', and is within six miles of Aylesbury. On the north-east side he reaches to Linford Wood, which abuts on the Oakley country, near Newport Pagnell; the river Ouse divides him from Lord Southampton, and he touches Mr. Drake's country somewhere in the neighbourhood of Adstock to the west. The kennels are at Whaddon Hall, close to the chase of that ilk; they are commodious enough, and very healthy. Whaddon was formerly a Royal Chase, and as such one of great antiquity. We gather from a work entitled "Magna Britannia" that the principal woodland in the northern part of Buckinghamshire is Whaddon Chase, containing 2,200 acres of coppices, interspersed with oak, ash, and other timber. The Manor of Whaddon, with the office of Keeper of the Chase, was anciently in the Giffords, but, after various seizures and sales in the interim, was purchased of the representatives of the second (Villiers) Duke of Buckingham, in 1698, by James Selby, Esq., and Dr. Willis, the celebrated physician. The manor, on partition, became the property of Dr. Willis, and was inherited by his grandson, Browne Willis, the antiquary, who resided many years at Whaddon Hall, which was purchased, with the manor, of his representatives, by the late Mr. Selby, who bequeathed the manor and other property to William Lowndes, Esq., of Winslow. The Whaddon Chase was originally held in high estimation as a royal hunting ground, but those were the days when the wolf, the bear, and the boar were the beasts of venery;" when the wild cat and marten cat, the stag, and roebuck, were accounted as the chief objects of attraction. Yet tempora mutantur, for Whaddon Chase is now Mr. Lowndes' magazine, and it is very doubtful whether any of the former noble possessors of the Chase ever felt that love and interest for their "beasts of venery" that the present owner evinces in favour of the wily animal they so utterly disregarded. Here the vixens lay up their cubs without fear of intrusion, and the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides were not watched with a more jealous eye than are these juvenile heroes in the forest of Whaddon.

Mr. Lowndes has hunted this country with foxhounds ever since the late Duke of Grafton gave up his-about ten years ago. The country was originally lent conditionally, that is, with the understanding that if the Duke's immediate family should resume the mastership of hounds, the country would be restored to them. During the Grafton dynasty we believe it was not hunted oftener than once a fortnight. To this, as already described, Mr. Lowndes has been able to add the Brickhill country, which comprises that portion nearest to Woburn, and which was given up to him by the Oakley Hunt.

Mr. Lowndes is a very zealous sportsman: "no day too long-no fox too strong" for him and his beautiful lot of bitches. He has had