Ragot was that he had migrated to the great forests of Charolais, and that he had no hope of his returning at present to his old quarters. I hope you will have some little indulgence for all the exclamations of despair, all the curses that saluted that most desolating announcement. The twenty-ninth bulletin of the grande armée, which announced to France the disasters of Moscow, did not cause a greater degree of stupor and disappointment. We were at the same time overcome with consternation, and furious with chagrin. Perret had immediately sunk down to the level of an ordinary mortal--something a little lower perhaps. The Marquis de Mac-Mahon alone appeared not to be discouraged ; for, in opposition to the opinion of Ragot, he considered it more than probable that the boar, accustomed to the woods about Prodhun, had, in the moments of either caprice or fear, described a large circle, and then returned by the wood of Masvres to his old quarters. Friend Perret was also of the same opinion, and notwithstanding the check that his infallibility had experienced, he agreed that the piqueurs had better return with him to Prodhun and sleep there, whilst we went back to Sully to await the result of their research the next morning. After some hesitation, I however resolved to accompany Perret, and away we went following slowly and sorrowfully the line of the great alley which led from the wood of Prodhun to the forest of Planoize, when suddenly Ragot, raising himself up in his stirrups, cried out to Perret, “You were quite right, sir; there is the track of your wild-boar." The eagle-glance of Ragot had discerned the animal's track on the top of a bank by the road side, on a wet spot where the snow had melted, and he immediately dismounted to make himself quite sure that there could be no mistake; and, within a couple of hours after the party had hopelessly separated, we had the wild boar “rembuché" in the wood of Prodhun; so that when the Marquis de Mac-Mahon was just getting off his horse, he received at Sully, which was four leagues from Prodhun, a billet from his friend Perret, who, upon the return of the boar having been discovered, sent off a messenger express, with the following poetical effusion : LE PLUS HUMBLE DE VENEURS AU GRAND MAITRE. Du Sanglier Prodhun, bommage au grand veneur ! O! Cara Patria! Habebis ossu mea! This means, my dear Mac-Mahon, in good French, that the boar has returned to Prodhun, as you seemed to imagine that he would do; that he is " remis " in my wood ; that we will hunt him to morrow, and you may depend upon finding him. The breakfust will be ready at ten o'clock. Rallie-Bourgogne ! Tout à vous, JULES PERRET. To those who may be gifted with the least spark of the sacred fire of imagination, it is easy to conceive what a magic effect this letter imme. diately produced, when the Marquis read it out to his disappointed and dispirited guests. They appeared quite diverted with the news ; they shook hands, they sang, they cried (for no joy is complete without a few tears) ; and if Perret had himself been present, they would have carried him on their shoulders in triumph ; however, they contented themselves by forgetting all the evil they had spoken of him, and acknowledged him, for the second time within twenty-four hours, as a hero. After all, men are not so bad as they are generally represented. At the appointed hour, all the joyous party, whose forces had been augmented by the unexpected arrival of Alexandre de Vitry, descended from their carriages in the humble court-yard of the modest Prodhun. Perret received, upon the threshold of his shooting-box, in all the good taste of modesty, the congratulations, the blessings, and the salutations of his illustrious friends. The boar was "remis” within ten minutes of the house, and the breakfast emitted a most agreeable odour from the cellar to the very garrets. I have no doubt that a description of the breakfast would prove exceedingly amusing to my readers ; but how can I achieve it, when I have not sufficient talent to paint all its eccentricities? How can I describe these beautiful turkeys, so tender perhaps whilst living, and so tough when killed, but nevertheless devoured with so much good-will and appetite ? How can I paint to you the great buxom peasant-wenches, with their staring eyes, their coarse red arms, running round the tableone pouring out the wine, another perhaps repelling some too familiar advances ? And how can I find sufficient words to do justice to that Chambertin, child of the comet in 1811, that Malagas, contemporary with Philip the Second, and those delicious liqueurs from the cellars of Madame Amphoux? I have dug into the very foundation of my memory ; I have turned and returned my remembrances from one side to the other, but I can bring to mind nothing that can be compared to the half-mad gaiety, the amiable jollity that pervaded that celebrated repast. All our hopes, all our desires, bottled-up for days like champagne, seemed to have exploded at once. The chaffing, the epigrams, and the toasts, seemed to increase with the emptyings of the bottles, which were continually on the move, and almost in the way of our glasses as they crossed. They called on me for a song ; for I was a bit of a singer in those days, and I did not wait to be asked twice ; but I had hardly achieved the first stanza of my lay, when suddenly the door was burst open of the room where we were breakfasting, which was on the first-foor, and one of our maritornes shouted out these words in the most dismal tone, which certainly would have been sufficient to have cleared a palace, “ The house is on fire ; and the cinders are falling like rain into the kitchen.” “Open your umbrellas," said our host, Perret, "and don't come here disturbing us." " Vive Perret !” We all cried out, without budging one inch. The next who came up stairs was Ragot himself, who declared that the wild boar would wind the fire and escape. “Go to the devil, and don't interfere with us,” roared out the whole party, with the exception of the best chasseur amongst us, the worthy Marquis de Mac-Mahon, who declared that this bit of advice from his piqueur was really worth attending to. “Well ! to horse then,” was the cry," and let the house take care of itself;" and away we rushed down the staircase, which crackled like a cutlet on the gridiron. When we arrived at the kitchen, we plainly perceived that the beam was threeparts burnt asunder. “Master — ” (I forget the farmer's name) said Perret, “when the hounds have found the boar, you may put out the fire ; but if you make the least noise before we find, so as to disturb the boar, you may just look out for the renewal of your lease next year, that is all.” The departure was rather an extraordinary scene; but nevertheless, although the horsemen did not appear to preserve that equilibrium of seat so essential in the chase, the few falls that occurred during our passage to the rendezvous were not attended with any dangerous results, and the general hilarity of the company, always in the ascendancy, seemed in no way to be diminished by the few catastrophes which happened of that description, and the whole cavalcade arrived at last at the spot where Ragot had placed his “ brisée,” without being disbanded. The hounds were uncoupled, and in five minutes the boar was on his legs, and the pack “drank him,” to use an expression consecrated to such events. Old Denis, that ancient piqueur of my father's, had another saying, which I never heard made use of excepting by him : when hounds were rnnning hard and doing their work in good style, he used to observe-" These hounds work now to help me do my duty to you." Now then the boar is found, and the whole field of horsemen are riding at “ catch as catch can” upon the line which the hounds have taken. The weather was beautiful, a regular mild November day, and no more wind than you would find in the bed-room of an invalid. Every sound of the horn, or note from the hound, fell clear upon the ear, and enabled the sportsmen to drive along without being obliged to stop and listen for the pack. Perhaps the horsemen might have been rather in that condition designated as “ three-sheets-in-the-wind;" but their horses, which had drunk nothing but draughts from the crystal fountain, guided their docile riders with a marvellous sagacity, whether their road lay through the tangled underwood, or beneath the spreading grove, or up the difficult ground of some broken and stony eminence. The boar, faithful to his habits and to the prophecy contained in the sublime poetry of his patron, Monsieur Jules Perret, returned, after having described a tolerably extensive circuit round the neighbouring forest, to the locality where he was first found, evidently determined to end his days in the woods of Prodhun. He broke, however, once more over the high-road which runs from Paris to Lyons, and then, after running some time on the opposite side, recrossed the road and tried to regain his favourite haunts, and passing along the edge of the pond of Lanove, which is on the boundary of the forest of Planoize, came to bay under a rock which happened to present itself, where, after having killed two hounds and wounded four or five more, his career was finished by a ball through the head, from the gun of Olivier de la Rochefoucauld, who was lucky enough to be first up. This dry analysis must necessarily give the reader but a very imperfect idea of that chase, which was in reality admirable, and far superior to anything of the sort that our most sanguine hopes could have anticipated. The great pace we went at through the forest, the steadiness and invincible determination of the hounds, and the stoutness of the hunted animal, together with the dramatic finish, accompanied by the cheering notes of l'hallali, left nothing more to be desired. Our return home, which I must not forget, was almost as joyous as the morning's ride to the rendezvous ; and it is superfluous to add, that our entrée into the great court at Sully was perfectly triumphant. When we were all assembled in the drawing-room after dinner, some one enquired of our friend Perret how his house got on, and if the fire had been put out : he merely made answer that he had never once thought of it since; and upon the Marquis de Mac-Mahon requesting him to allow him to send a messenger over to make enquiries, he observed, with the most perfect composure, that the trouble would be useless, adding, without a muscle of his face undergoing the least change, “Let us have a little whist.”' HUNTERS AND HUNTING MEN. BY HARRY HIEOVER. In using the term “ Hunters," the sportsman will naturally conclude that I allude only to the horses that carry us. It is not, however, quite thus ; for before I say anything relative to the quadruped, I have a word or two to say about the biped hunter. Now speaking of a man as a hunter, no more conveys the same ideas to the man of the present half-century, of a hunting man, than does using the term “ waggoner ” carry our thoughts to the once artists that tooled the Quicksilver, Berkley Hunt, Manchester Express, Brighton Age or Pearl ; though those " lights of other days” were frequently in road language mentioned as first-rate waggoners. It is quite true the rail is beyond comparison faster than the “Wonders” of such times, even over their best bit of five-mile ground, where a team of four all but thoroughbreds, half cripples, who could go in no other way but a gallop, went a pace that would not have been thought bad over the flat at Newmarket; and the momentum of the coach once got in full swing, they had little more to do than keep out of its way. Everything is more or less (a something) by comparison ; so the next stage out of Hounslow, that I have so often driven over with perfect delight, when the old uns had got settled a-bit to their collars, began to find their legs, and only wanted holding together, was slow to the ordinary working of the iron-way. So far, my still-cherished conveyance is beat; but if our coaches were slower than our steamers, let me tell the rising generation that the men of those days were a good deal“ faster” than are the majority of those of the present one; for the man is not made in teclinical terms “fast," because the tender that draws him is. It is true it may sound “fast” if, with an affected yawn, a young gentleman raises himself on the wellstuffed cushion of a first-class carriage, and lisps his opinion that “we are going confounded slow," when thirty miles an hour is the speed. I must, however, tell the gentleman that, though the train is actually fast, he is determinedly slow, when compared to men I have seenvery slow coach indeed, if he could be placed by their side. He may drive his mamma in her Croydon-basket ; aye, or her George the Fourth's phaeton ; we will admit he may manage a pair ; but perhaps some reader may remember the time when the—he was indeed not merely a Marquis of Worcester, could lay hold of four of the greatest rogues that ever revelled in the name of bokickers, and in a mile bring them together as if no one of them had ever dreamed of a bit of mischief in his life ; and this done by a nobleman whose courtly demeanour challenged admiration where all was courtly, respect from all who came within his sphere of action, and regard and gratitute from thousands whose misfortunes had awakened the sympathies of his noble mind and ever kind and benevolent heart. I believe we may truly say that the inhabitants of every nation are more or less hunters, but differing widely as to their incentives to be so, and as widely in the sort of game they pursue. It may be objected that the man who merely takes an animal in a trap or pitfall can scarcely be termed a hunter. As regards our ideas of hunting, he certainly could not be so termed; but though he may not, as we do, hunt the animal when found, he hunts or seeks to find him ; so he is most indubitably in his own person a hunter; and if we may judge of enthusiasm by the danger, difficulty, or deprivation encountered, the chamois hunter encounters more danger in his single person in one week, than does a combined field of Leicestershire sportsmen in a whole season. The beaver-trapper undergoes difficulty and privation, in his lonely and solitary pursuit, that would not be endured by the fox-hunter to see the gamest fox killed that ever faced the picked part of Leicestershire. No doubt the Alpine hunter and the New World trapper encounter what they do as a mode of livelihood ; but as in each country there are other modes by which a living may be, and is obtained, it shews each prefers hardships as a hunter, to more ease and less danger in labouring in other pursuits. Those who have conversed with many hunters of the two descriptions quoted, assure me that the chamois hunter speaks of the thrilling ardour of his chase with the most intense enthusiasm, and the trapper hails with delight the season that sends him a solitary wanderer in the endless forests, where no human voice responds to his own. Could we but instil a little of his patience and silence into our collected “ Field,” till their game was fairly “tally-ho'd away,” what a blessing it would be! then we would freely admit them all the enthusiasm the most enthusiastic chamois hunter could feel and show. “But if thy proud aspiring soul disdains so mean a prize," there is the bristly pard, the far more dangerous tiger, the tawny lion, or the gigantic elephant, whose bare tread would crush his pursuer, as that pursuer does the worm he treads on; and “a walk over,” where this giant is the actor, would not be quite so satisfactory as a walk over the T.M.M. or Ditch-in at Newmarket. Thousands think pork a delicacy ; few object to a really good sausage as a relish at breakfast, and with great goût we discuss them, when Piggy has been killed to our hand, and the sausages brought to our table ; but when we have to chase him at the risk of his making sausagemeat of us, a modus operandi to which I am told he is somewhat prone, he would appear to our unpractised eye a far different animal to |