of a summer's day. For motliness, (is there such a word? if not, there, ought to be)—for motliness, I say, commend me to your otter-hunters. Fox-hunting has its livery: so has thistle-whipping: so has stagbunting. Patches of red or green are damnatory to a painter's view of the subject. But what picturesqueness in a field of otter-hunters! Landseer or friend Cooper might paint at 'em for ever, and still find fresh subjects for his canvass. Nobody knows before hand how he shall be dressed; and, each one being left to his own devises on the subject, the result may be imagined. Here you have them, high and low, rich and poor, of all sorts. On one side is the opulent squire of the parish, bandying jokes with the parish clerk (old Hopkins, a glorious old fellow, of whom we have already spoken): on the other is the high-born lord of an adjacent manor, cheek-by-jowl with the keeper of a petty beer-shop.

But see! our panorama is a moving one. The gallant master of the pack has given the word, and every wiry-haired rascal of the lot is in motion. Now, with noses down and sterns up, away they go along the bank side, examining every holt, and stone, and overhanging bush, and decaying stump, that presents itself. Not a rat-hole can escape them. In the water, out of the water, under the water, above the water—'tis all one to them; must and will have him if he's to be found within ten leagues of the spot. The bipeds meantime are not idle. They have to examine the banks and sands, to see if they can find the seal of the otter, or the leavings of his last Lenten feast. Old Hopkins is the first to make this discovery. The remains of a fine fat two-pound trout are discovered beneath a bank of oziers: and almost at the same moment Truelass, who has just returned from a trip of examination to a neighbouring oak-tree, gives tongue at the edge of an adjoining shallow. Truelass is too good a hound to leave any doubt as to the quality of the evidence; and in an instant Random, Lounger, Goblin, Primrose, Nimrod, Luckylass, and the rest are rantipoling away at her heels, and awakening every echo, and every echo of an echo that our little Clear valley has to boast. In ten minutes more, a view-holloa is heard among the alders. Old Hopkins is the happy wight who gets first view. And, hear the voice with which he gives out the news, you'd never think that was the same man who so meekly announces the Hundredth Psalm, or a vestry meeting, in our parish church on a Sunday. But no matter. The otter is "put down;" and now the chase in good earnest commences. All is excitement. What splashing and squashing! what holloaing and bellowing! what ducking and diving! what ripping and tearing! What neck-andcropping and head-over-heeling among men, hounds, and otter! Now they are all together, kicking about the spray and pebbles on one of the shallows: now old dark-skin has given his enemies the slip, and taken up a fresh position in a neighbouring holt. Now they have again bolted

him, and driven him into the deep water. Now nothing is seen of him but his chain, as he passes rapidly across the deep, still pool. Now, coming up to vent, one of the hounds has seized him by the throttle, and down they both go to the bottom of the stream. Now Lucky-lass-for Lucky-lass it is-comes up again, bleeding from the bite of her enraged adversary. Now the fish-fox is again viewed across a shallow, and seems to be making his line for the mill. The miller appears on the

little wooden bridge over the dam, hanging over the stream like a waterlily (a little flowery language may be excused on such an occasion), and does all he can to head back the chase. But the latter, confiding in his patron saint, (Saint Mary Ottery), dashes by that powdery personage as if he were a water-lily in good earnest. Down, down he goes along that deep narrow channel that leads to the wheel-good heavens! what does he mean to do? On, on, floating among the straws on the surface of the dam-over he goes-down under the wheel-the hounds after him-headlong into the midst of the roar and foam-deep, deep into that "hell of waters"-lost now to view and to hope-and the ponderous wheel continues its course, growling and foaming, like a demon gloating over its prey. We all turned pale: the very miller grows whiter at the contemplation of such a catastrophe. The master of the pack is very near impaling himself on his own spear, and poor Hopkins is giving vent to his sorrow by humming the tune of a funeral hymn.

Tally-ho! tally-ho! By all that is wonderful, the otter appears again in the stream below, as fresh as a daisy; and Primrose, Lounger, Nimrod, Random, Truelass, and their "jolly companions every one," come rolling out of the mill-tail as if they had only been there to be ground young again! Well, if a cat has nine lives, otters and otterhounds have ninety-nine, of a surety. Away we go again, as merrily as ever: by rock and grove, through park and meadow, winding amidst millions of flowers, ranging through a thousand scenes of plenty and gladness. Not a wile that the ingenuity of man, hound, or otter can devise but is put in practise and sooth to say, with all our superiority of numbers and sagacity, the otter has the best of it. In vain we have ordered 66 no quarter :" in vain we have declared "war to the spear:" all our efforts are useless. Nets are now called for--and fixed: but, the chase being rude and the nets rotten, they are soon broken through, and then set aside as-unsportsmanlike. Truelass, however, having luckily encountered the foe on a shallow, where diving was out of the question, has managed to hold him fast till some of her helpmates could come up; and poor tough-hide, being well nigh smothered in the sand and gravel, has been forced to take to the land. What a tussle now on the newly mown turf! what a crush and a rush to the centre of action! you would NO. LXXV.-VOL. XIII.

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think the men, as well as the hounds, wanted to worry the otter. What hooting and howling! it's hard to say which make the most noise, men or dogs. Yowh, yowh!-who-hoop, who-hoop!-oh! the men have it hollow. Poor otter! his death now is certain. All the eleven hounds and three terriers are upon him at once: all the hunters are gathered round him in a dense ring, with their spears in their hands and the death-howl on their lips. Escape seems impossible: and we already see him, in our mind's eye, stuffed, in a glass case, with moss at his feet and half a dozen butterflies behind him, the glory of somebody or other's hall table.

"Holloa! take care of the drain!" But before any one can summon up presence of mind enough to determine the best means of "taking care of the drain," the amphibious one is safely ensconced within its friendly cover, from which all the efforts of all the terriers in the world cannot dislodge him; as for digging him out, the miller himself, who knows every inch of the country, below ground as well as above, declares it to be "a thing quite unpossible."

Reader, it has been often urged against sporting authors, that they write without a moral. Do they! Who can read this history, I should like to know, without learning from it that most cheering of all moralities that we should NEVER DESPAIR.

YACHTS OFF COWES.

Engraved by J. W. ARCHER, from a Painting by G. Balmer.

IN the treatment of this subject the painter has displayed his usual ability; and, instead of representing a line of punts, rigged sloop-fashion, with their crews seated to leeward of the boom, which is hauled close on the weather quarter, he has given the two yachts which he has introduced n different points of view. The one which has first arrived-for we are to presume that there has been a match-is already anchored; while the other, of which a stern view is given, is passing a-stern of the winner for the purpose of anchoring beyond her. The yachts are portraits; but we decline to mention their names; as we would thus deprive at least fifty owners of cutters belonging to the Royal Yacht Squadron of the pleasure of fancying that one of them is his own. From the style in which the plate is engraved Archer has proved that he has more than one string to his bow, and that he can hit the mark at sea as well as on shore.