Phiz is rather big; I should like to give him a turn afore you ride him, and

Stop," said I, not quite liking the way in which he was running through my stud, and wondering what there would be for me to ride; 66 stop, I must have something for tomorrow; I see the Belvoir are within reach, and I should like to look at them."

"Beg your pardon, sir, but to-morrow's the Quorn day, in High Leicestershire, so I kept Barabbas and the young one for you to ride to-morrow; ten miles from here, sir, and a very good place. I had the gray out the beginning of the week and he frames remarkably well, never seems to refuse, pulls uncommon hard: but I'll put a bridle on, sir, that'll soon stop, that; and Barabbas will go very well for second horse, and—'

دو

I was forced to interrupt my voluble master of the horse, to beg he would indulge in no vagaries about bridles, as the little experience I have had has convinced me that servants and their masters are apt to differ considerably in their mode of treatment of that most sensitive of all things, a horse's mouth.

'Stop, let me have the hack at the door in time, if he is sound, and-"

66 Dinner, sir," said the waiter, which furnished me with a good excuse for getting rid of my attendant, and I stalked into my dressing-room to wash my hands whilst my soup was cooling, with the comfortable reflection that amongst all the horses in my stable, the two I would most particularly rather not have ridden for my début at such a place as Barkby, were a young one, of whom I knew nothing, except that he pulled hard, and was rising six: and Barabbas, of whom what I did know was by no means enough to give me confidence in a large crowd endeavouring to spoil a quick thing over a stiff country.

CHAPTER III.

A fox-hunt to a foreigner is strange,

And likewise subject to the double danger
Of tumbling first, and having in exchange
Some pleasant jesting at the awkward stranger.

Mazeppa answered, "Ill betide

The school wherein I learned to ride."

THE next morning saw me trotting merrily along, after a due study of the map and observation of the sign-posts, on high thoughts intent. I was screwed "up" to the stickingplace, and meant mischief. The morning was as if ordered expressly there had been a slight frost, but the day was clouding over; and the wind, though scarcely perceptible, had that keenness which so often accompanies fine scenting weather. I had started early, to avoid the companionship of men with whom I had not yet the honour of being acquainted, and many of whom I did not know even by sight, though their names were familiar to my ear and honoured in my heart. Nimrod's book, 'The Hard Riders of England,' had taught me, as a boy, to look upon a good man over a country" with a most reverential feeling; and I had really never quite got over this sort of hero-worship. It would be the height of injustice to deny that many of those whose names my boyhood honoured solely for their well-known success as sportsmen, have been equally distinguished in the more important pursuits of life. Witness the court, the camp, and the bar; the desert and the ocean, the plains of the Punjaub and the walls of St. Stephen's.

66

I was a little nervous, certainly, and none the less so for having to ride Gray-friar; but I was determined to go, and a little more or less of peril made trifling odds. It was a service of danger altogether; but then the kudos if obtained

in that country! In short, "Do or die" was the mottovery much the feeling with which a Frenchman goes out hunting. His national vanity makes him think the eyes of all England are upon him, his inborn gallantry impels him to be forward, and his acquired sang froid prevents him from disclosing his misgivings. He generally rides unmercifully hard, till in the natural course of events he is stopped by a rattling fall, and is invariably flattered with the somewhat doubtful compliment of having gone so extremely well for a Frenchman; but for all this, I do not think he thoroughly enjoys it. I found my way easily; and cantering pleasantly over sundry most extensive grass-fields, agreed with the noble lord who used to declare riding to covert in Leicestershire beat hunting anywhere else. An early breakfast, not so hearty as it might have been, a free-going hack, and a fine morning are wonderful things for the spirits; and I was delighted with the cheerful "Good mornings" of a farmer or two whom I overtook, and the universal touch of the hat from every countryman I met. A friend of mine used to say, "They always call you My Lord before Christmas; afterwards, lords are so plentiful here that it is no compliment:" and certainly a scarlet coat is duly appreciated in Leicestershire.

Well, I rode on, and on I rode," as the old Border ballad has it; and after overtaking sundry horses that looked like the impersonation of speed, strength, and gallantry (I am at a loss for a classic simile: the Greeks had not an idea of what a horse should be; look at the heavy-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 narratur ;" 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 standstill, 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 luminary.

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 stile, 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 Gray-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 twentyfour 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 "couleur de rose."