'If thou be hurt by hart, it brings thee to thy bier ;

But barber's hand will boar's hurt heal: thereof thou need not fear.'

"The joy which followed this victory can hardly be described; and the hills re echoed with the triumphant hallali. All those who assisted at the unharbouring of the stag could not be present at the death: but the trumpets sonnded long; the hounds' fee was magnificent, and the liberality of the Prince unbounded towards those of his suite who had the good fortune to assist at the death."

Lavalette's account of the fate of the stag of Ardennes concluded we thanked him heartily for it, and professed the interest we had taken. in the long and painful flight of the noble animal.

"I would have called off the blood-hounds at the last," exclaimed Crauford emphatically. "The honour of running him to the death achieved, so fine a stag deserved to have his life given him. Why did not the Prince do as your Henri Quatre did at that famous hunt which took place three days before the battle of Arques, and sound the retreat?"

"You forget," returned Lavalette, laughing, "that, in the chase you allude to, Henri Quatre was debtor to the stag, and gained, by watching his manœuvres, the battle of Arques. Here it was different: the Prince was nettled at having lost the stag in two chases, and could not forget his disappointment. It was too much for a keen hunter to endure."

"Success ought to have softened him," replied Crauford, " and made him feel pity for the animal's wretched plight. His part should have been to make

-the disappointed hungry pack

Retire submiss, and grumbling quit their prey,'

as the poet says."

I think we spent the rest of that day-for we ate our cold dinner, brought in our fishing baskets, upon the banks of the lake-in disconrsing upon this famous run, and calling to mind all the stag-hunts of note in England and Scotland which we could remember, ending with that celebrated run of the Ripley deer, who, turned out at Maidenhead on the Berkshire side of the Thames, crossed that river and was taken at Finchley. Surprising, however, as this run of the Ripley deer was, it was far from equalling that of the stag of Ardennes, which Lavalette did not fail to remark, after minutely inquiring the distance. It was in vain that Crauford talked of runs in Scotland which he had heard of; or I, to turn the conversation, for I saw that the interlocutors were getting warm on the subject, remarked

"Yes, these chases were worth attending: hunting a deer over the Scottish heaths, and amidst wild crags and deep glens, was exhilarating work. It was something like that chase of Childe the Hunter, and his companions, amidst the Dartmoor Tors.

'They follow'd through the rock-strew'd glen ;
They plung'd through the river's bed,
And scal'd the hill-top where the tor
Uplifts his hoary head.

'But gallantly that noble deer

Defies the eager throng,

And still through wood, and brake, and fen
He leads the chase along.

'Now through the flashing stream he darts
The wave aside he flings;

Now o'er the cataract's bright arch
With fearless leap he springs.

'And many a chasm yawning wide
With a desperate bound he clears;
Anon like a shadow he glances by

The rock of six thousand years!""

"The description is vivid," Lavalette said, as I paused, " and well images the stag's flight through a wild country; but it is irrelevant to what we are talking about, and to tell you my mind," he continued, with a slight smile, "I myself, in spite of the different opinion of your great Duke of Wellington, am satisfied that there are no such chases in England or her dominions as our chases; not excepting even your Chevy Chace. I think, in short, that the English

แ

Stop, my friend," exclaimed Crauford, with some heat; "you said England or her dominions.' I, who have a good dash of Scottish blood in my veins, will set you right as relates to Scotland, by giving you an idea of one of our ancient Scottish hunts, the like of which was never seen in France. This chase-the particulars of it are related by the celebrated William Barclay, who was an eye-witness to it-this chase took place in the year 1563, and was got up by the Earl of Athole for the entertainment of Queen Mary. I wish I had Barclay's book with me to read you his full account. As it is, I can only give you a slight sketch. Two thousand Highlanders were employed in driving to the hunting ground all the deer from the forests of Athole, Badenoch, Mar, Murray, and the surrounding counties. This they performed so well that in less than two months they had brought together two thousand red deer, besides roes and fallow deer; all which number were brought before the eyes of the Queen, who, on the day of the hunt, was in a glen with her suite awaiting their appearance. Such a hunting as this, you will allow, was on a large scale; and before evening set in, there were killed 360 deer with five wolves and some roes."

Lavalette, with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, was about to reply, when the conversation was put an end to by the sudden appearance of one of the chief foresters, who paused, as he was in the act of passing us, to inquire if we had seen a gentleman dressed in a green hunting suit whilst we were in the forest. Lavalette had seen a person answering the description wending his way in the early part of the day in a direction which he described. This satisfied the inquirer, who, finding that our route was the same as his own, continued to walk with us until we neared the village. Our conversation was now entirely of fishing, of what sport we had and where we had been; and we learned from our new acquaintance some useful particulars respecting the best trout-streams in the neighbourhood, which Crauford and I determined to profit by, should we continue to remain in their vicinity.

A WAYSIDE WELCOME.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY A. COOPER, R.A.

"To hunt the white-skinned zebra,

Whose legs are striped like Indian stuffs,

Or to overtake the antelope that lives in wild regions,
I have ridden horses with flesh hardened by exercise.
It was Allah who created them, for the happiness of Believers!

"Many a time, too, have I rested my heart
On that of a maid with budding bosoms,
And legs adorned with anklets of gold.

"In our incursions of horsemen,
When eye must meet eye,

Many a time have I said,

'Forward! forward! O my beloved courser!'
Followed up the enemy, routed and fleeting !"

The above lines are taken from General Daumas' Horses of the Sahara, a very excellent translation of which, by Mr. Hutton, is published by Allen, of Waterloo-place. With the flowery style of the East well preserved, the work abounds with hints and wrinkles that even so high an authority as an Englishman might occasionally study with advantage; while to every chapter is appended a kind of commentary by the Emir Abd-el-Kader, who thus speaks more directly to the subject of our illustration: " In summer, the horses. are not watered until three o'clock in the afternoon. In winter they are watered rather earlier-from noon to one. It is the time of day when, in the open air, the water has lost much of its coldness. These principles are expressed in the following proverb, known to the meanest horseman of the desert:

"In the hot season, put back the hour of the watering-place,
And put forward that of the nose-bag;

In the cold season, put forward the hour of the watering-place,
And put back that of the nose-bag.'

Among the Desert-tribes, for forty days, counting from the month of August, the horses are watered only every other day. The same method is pursued during the last twenty days of December

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