Most of them are so narrow at the bottom, as scarcely to afford room for the wheels of a cart; and they intersect each other like the streets of a town. One of these narrow green alleys forms a complete and most regular circle, from which, at various intervals, diverge other alleys of the same character, which pursue short windings among the hills, and may lead you, if tempted to follow them, by very unexpected openings into the circle again. The whole of these downs, hills, and hollows, are unrelieved by a tree or bush; but covered with a short herbage, and chequered with furze-brakes, which give shelter to an abundance of foxes, hares, and partridges.

Such a country, considered in relation to hunting, has this peculiarity, my reader will apprehend, that it offers no leaps-no immortality for those who would break their necks over stone-walls and stake-bound hedges. We have hills, however, with their steep sides slippery as glass, and perforated with rabbitholes, which supply quite as much dignity to the chase as can be required from difficulty and peril. In critical moments of the day, you will see heroes rush down these hills with a thoughtless impetuosity, that nothing but the occasion can excuse. You must have a horse carefully broken and tutored to such experiments; when you will find him, as you desire it, freely skating down with you some hundred feet, rarely taking his legs from the ground, yet keeping himself upon them with wonderful skill and certainty. There is always a degree of risk, it may be supposed, in these lubricous descents; but what is the life of a man, when the question is the death of a fox? But to our sport: and first for

THE HARRIERS.

The establishment in which I have been a party in this department of the chase, is only a farmer's "hunt,' affecting no style or pomp, but prosecuting its essential business with a degree of spirit not to be surpassed. The pack was kept till very lately, and had been kept for some forty years, by the celebrated " old Martin," so I venture to call him, for, within one degree of latitude at least, his name was as general as the air.

He was the finest old man I ever saw-was, I say, (melancholy tense!) for, with sorrow I speak it, he is now no more. At the time when I first knew him, he was some years beyond seventy, yet ruddy and fresh as the morning-firm, muscular, activedespising cold, and rain, and hail, and hurricanes, and battling through the utmost fatigues of the manly exercise in which he delighted, with all the gaiety of youth. He was reputed to be the most fearless rider in the county; yet his daring was not greater than his skill, for he never met with an accident. During the season, he used to hunt, just as at five-and-twenty, three days in a week, regularly following his huntsman from the kennel at ten in the morning, and returning with him at nightfall. Frost and snow apart, no description of weather had power to keep him at home on a hunting-day. As master of the pack, he had a special character to maintain, which would not allow him to shrink from circumstances, that his less restricted companions of the field might hesitate to face. Come what come might, the hounds were always at the place of meeting at the predestined hour; and many and many a time has the old gentleman followed up the chase through a whole day of ceaseless rain, and raving wind, with no partner but his huntsman, who travelled on foot, and was seldom near him. The distinguishing mark in his dress was a white smock-frock, out of which he was never seen except at church on Sundays. From this homely garb, together with an extreme plainness and simplicity in his general character and habits, he was regarded as the last surviving representative, of any note in this part of the world, of the old school of farmers, as it existed before farmers had coated and booted themselves into gentlemen. That he did not think it becoming to cast off his frock on light pretences may be inferred from the fact, that he was worth above a hundred thousand pounds. He was called by his brother-sportsmen, in allusion to his frock, the flag-admiral; his white drapery flapping in the wind, and far seen on the hills, being an excellent signal for loiterers gone

astray, who might be sure that the frock and the hounds were not far apart. I was with him, I have a pride in recollecting, on the last day that he was permitted to hunt on those hills, which for half a century he had gladdened with his merry halloo and hark forward! He was ill, and looked suddenly and alarmingly altered; but he brightened up at the spirit-stirring call of his dogs, and rode well throughout the chase-true, to the latest moment, to the only amusement which he had ever considered worth the notice of a man. The hunt closed on this occasion at precisely half-past two o'clock; and at that hour, to give some notion of the spirit of this gallant old man, he set off to ride seven miles to some dinner of business at Pevensey, and came back to his bed at night. He never went out again. His complaint was some febrile disorder which was not to be subdued. After a few days of suffering, he was, with some hesitation on his own part, attended for the first time in his memory by a doctor, a sort of mediator for whom he had always expressed the greatest contempt. There was no hope among his friends from this hour: he took physic and died. Such a man is not to be replaced. There will be no more hunting, it is agreed, on the heights of Firle. Hounds if you like, and people to follow them-but no more hunting.

For the other members of the "hunt," a more cursory notice will suffice. They consisted of about a dozen farmers, of various ages, from twenty to fifty,-hard, tough, sturdy fellows, with iron fibres and dauntless hearts; together with five or six veterans, an invalid company, who, though prevented by age and infirmity, by lameness, rheumatism, and dislocations, from joining in the activities of the field, could not consent to retire altogether from the scene, but would be crawling about to see and hear what was going on; helping out their little part in the present sport, by the recollections which it called forth of better and brisker days. One of them had a dislocated hip, the result of a fall from his horse, which made his seat on the saddle so wearisome and uneasy, that he was obliged to dismount

every half-hour, to relieve himself by a change of posture. He admitted that hunting was grown a somewhat painful exercise to him; but he had hunted, he said, with old Martin for forty years, and-what could he do? "Besides," said he, "I can rest now and then, and my mare (I will say that for her) is the easiest beast in the world, so that, somehow or other, I contrive, thank God, to make out a morning's amusement yet.” This open country, with its commanding eminences, is very favourable to these veterans, allowing them generally, with a few judicious changes on their part in their posts of observation, to be within sight or sound of the hunt from the starting to the death. The hare, indeed, will sometimes run from them out of all reasonable bounds, but in that event they have expectation and conjecture to keep them warm; and will willingly wait for an hour or two till the return of the dogs, finding an ample reward for their patience in the very earliest news that takes air, of all that has transpired in their absence.

On one of those mornings which sportsmen combine to call fine, and which keep every body else within doors, these "merry men all" meet to beat up the covers, let us say, of Norton-Top. A pleasant rain and welcome; but a bright sun never made a fine morning yet, or Old Martin knew nothing about it. Let there not be much wind either, if you would prosper, this being an agent almost as offensive to the moist scent as the sun. The hounds (thirty to the pack) are uncoupled, and, after a prelusive roll, and shake, and run, dash into the blood-letting thicket of furze, or hawth, as we call it, unmindful of the pins and needles that would obstruct their passage, save that here and there you may hear a testy yelp, or a surly growl, as the disposition of the creature may be, from one over-hasty, or perhaps, as Old Martin would say, out of humour this morning." The horsemen scatter themselves wide, and keep beating away with their whips, while now and then a promising cry bursts from some favourite dog, just to preserve our attention from sleeping, and assure us that we are amused. That's Jowler again!-she is just before him; the cry becomes more

ploughed land, on which the scent soon cools or evaporates, is at least perilous; but sheep-stains, recently left by a flock, are fatal; they cut off the scent irrecoverably, making a gap, as it were, in the clue, in which the dogs have not even a hint for their guidance. These dicta of mine are meant to apply only to our own particular "hunt;" other packs, in differently conditioned countries, have, no doubt," faults" of their own, which I know nothing about. Non omnia, &c.

An hour and a half may be stated as the average duration of a chase, with all its interruptions, in which time the hare may run ten or twelve miles; but if the scent is strong, and she is closely pressed, she may come to her death in considerably less time, after running a much greater distance. At the latter end of the season, in February and March, the hares become exceedingly wild, and run with all the vigour and determinacy of a fox, justifying the wellknown 66 comparative, as mad as a March hare." We have it on record, safe for our posterity, that on the 13th of February, 1822, a hare, put up by old Martin himself, led us a chase of twenty-five miles, in which she ran through seven- -wasn't it seven, Mr. Stace? yes, seven parishes, swam across a river, and back again, and finally made her escape, leaving dogs, and horses, and men breathless, and worn out behind her. But I am too talkative by half, and they always said so of me in the field. We started, I think, from Norton-Top suppose then, after the usual rounds, that you see the hare at last (a sorry mark for so many foes) sorely beleaguered-looking dark and draggled-and limping heavily along; then stopping to listen-again tottering on a little-and again stopping; and at every step, and every pause, hearing the death-cry grow nearer and louder. At this period the sternness of my purpose would relent: I was always inclined to say, like Macbeth," we will proceed no further in this business," and would willingly have given the little animal a kinder reward than awaited her, for the amusement that she had afforded me. But it might not be the dogs rush in upon her and seize her -the horsemen gallop up-cut away

with their whips-hold up the game

and the cry is dead! dead! dead! There might happen to be no horseman near at this moment; in which case, the hare, bones, skin, and all, would in a few seconds be divided, and swallowed amongst the hounds, no signs being left but the stains of blood upon their jaws. But so disgraceful a casualty as this was rare indeed under the reign of our vigilant and active commander. I loved to see him always at this crowning scene of our sport. He would seize the hare, and throw it at his feet, to indicate its death to the dogs, who, looking up at him, and baying and howling, would cluster in a circle round him, keeping precisely at whip's length from the centre, or their master-our father-sportsman, who stood like a conqueror-his venerable face suffused all over with a placid triumph, which it was impossible not to sympathise with. Presently he would prepare for his last offices to the hare on this side the dish. Diving into the depths of his capacious breeches-pocket- the right pocket-whose hard contents were plainly mapped out in grease and dirt on the outside-he would pull forth his knife of all work-deliberately open it - make the right incision, tear out the entrails of the animal, and dash them among the dogs-at the same time, with insidious and crimsoned finger (for he loved a joke), widening the mouth of some staring shepherd-boy, who would be standing at his elbow. Poor old Martin! Not two months ago, I saw him doing, looking, joking, just as I have described him. Peace be with you, my old friend! your good deeds-generous--charitable - were not few; and if to love a drizzly morning three days in a week be no sin, you can have little to answer for.

COURSING.

This is a gentle exercise, not unfriendly to a sunny morning-hunting fit for a lady-indeed, the dogs employed seem made on purpose for the ladies. The greyhound, I think, is the most beautiful animal in the world-beautiful, not only from its graceful lines and perfect symmetry, but from the palpable expediency of its frame in all its parts, as a thing of speed. The powers of other brutes are not obvious till they are disco