The real pleasure of "the show," however, is very problematical after all, whatever the effect may be. A crowd, to us, of any-bodies, lords or commons, is the summum malum of inconvenience and annoyance. For Epsom, to be sure, it is part of the agreement and ceremony that you should hustle and jostle your way there with a nervous twitching, and ready chaffering at everything that passes or is passed by you. That is all well enough; for, like the entry of oysters or exit of Guy Fawkes, "it's only once a year." The law of chances may pull you through safe; but just fancy, as "a regular contributor" to the assembly, attending a succession of "show" meets (as they all are, more or less), with her Gracious Majesty's stag-hounds. Most hounds, they say, get, in time, a knack of clearing themselves from the crowd; and no doubt Fatima, Fashion, Favourite, and the others of "the ladies," can cleverly avoid the favourites of fashion by which they are so frequently pursued. Men, too, may, as well as hounds, get casehardened; but, for our own part, we would rather escape the apprenticeship-content, if not with "the crust," at any rate with "the liberty," to take something like a line of our own.

And now, having treated you to a slight dissertation on the show of stag-hunting, come along with us down into the vale for a taste of the pure "go, connected with the same "royal and loyal" amusement. Send your horse or two on for a meet where "The Chieftain" or "The Clipper" will be turned out of his trap, with as little ostentation as the hero in "The Sure Find," before you; and yet, where you may have a run that for country, pace, hounds, and general effect, no establishment in England can excel.

Baron Rothschild's hounds on Thursday at Dinton Castle.

That is the "whereabouts," as Bell's Life says of the fights—not on the swell side of the Aylesbury country, and not " within five minutes' walk of the railway-station"-and so not likely to be patronised by the crowd of cockney dealers and tailors, that seem to be the curse of staghunting in most countries. Still, though not exactly the cream, it is anything but the worst sample of the glorious vale of Buckinghamshire; and would that we had here again the pencil, to assist the pen in carrying out its object. First, for the old castle itself-rather, perhaps, "a point" for the prospect than a bond fide ruin-standing on a gentle eminence, and backed by the well-shaded village-church and manorhouse. It is not, however, for any show effect of this sort that we have selected our scene; but, rather, for the front view to which we bring round the deer-cart. The large, strong-fenced meadows stretching down to the river Thame, that, once crossed, may with "good speed" send you on to the Brill country; or, bending the other way, furnish fearful work for man and horse as you race towards Heythrop. And look at the provision made to meet all this attraction of place; the use but not the abuse of Croesus, that gives so workmanlike a turn-out to match it. You miss, maybe, a little of the ginger-bread gilt that perhaps necessarily attends all the processions and proceedings of the royals; but mark the thorough neatness which so well compensates for the glitter. Look at Tom Ball, so perfect a specimen of what a whipperin should be a whipper-in mounted on a two-hundred guinea nag, and with nerve and seat and head well able to hand his clever horse

over so trying a country. Give another glance to the fit and cut of his equipment. No gloss or finery; but stamping him, in every item, as a servant done justice to by his master, and that will, in return, do justice to his place. Observe, again, the number of high-conditioned, magnificent, and powerful horses waiting about for the two or three barons whose letters of advice have registered them as down to-day. The eagle-eyed stud-groom and knowing second horsemen, the glossycoated, wiry, and determined-looking pack "out." Doesn't everything evince the best that money, taste, and care could accomplish; and doesn't everything carry out "the go" we intended it to illustrate?

There is hardly a man present out of place; and so you may be sure there are not many at most. Jemmy F-d-g, showing his teeth, and ready to put the brown at anything-never mind how high or wide-if it's only worth his while; and his Baronship really does sound like a buyer. The two Oxonians, seasoned both beyond a doubt, and as palpably workmen the first peep you have of them; our host of The George, on a home-made one, and in full fig for a turn at the Purse in the scurry the locals wind up the season with. Ditto, an invariable opponent for the said purse, in the person of a hard-riding, queer-tempered farmer, on a non-flesh carrying grey. Take, for one more instance, a big-whiskered surgeon, that you might pardonably mistake for "old Muck," the steeple-chaser; and wind up our small party with poor Harry Dd, the most unclerical figure imaginable, in his green, hare-hunter coat, man-of-war shirt, new-police hat, Life-guardsman boots, and so forth.

But," attention!" The Barons Brothers are here to the minute, as all good men of business should be: one dealer and two mustachioed dandies accompany them; and "time's up." The sure find is verified; and even if this one should take too soon to the soil or the sulks, there is another inside to succeed him. Off he trots for the Thame and at once; and a teazer it will be, we know from experience. The bruising, but rather wild, Mr. Roffee (we speak two or three years after date) brings round the beauties; already the shining hat of his reverence is seen " nicking it" down the nearest lane; Jemmy gathers the brown up for mischief and selling; "the House" go with their hounds; and the unhappy author prepares himself for the worst, on the hardest puller and safest fencer that ever was broke.

"There they go!" says the old yeoman, too good a judge to hurry his pony, and well content to watch "the providential escape" of Oxonian Major at the first double. "There they go!"

And the go you see becomes the cue to the whole scene.

167

A PEEP AT THE PROVINCES;

OR,

THE CRACK PACKS OF ENGLAND UNDER REVIEW.

BY ACTEON.

(Continued.)

This

Besides the district hunted by Mr. Farquharson's hounds, there is another old and acknowledged hunting country in this shire, viz., the Charbro' country, situated on the south-east side of the county. country was formerly hunted by Mr. Drax Grovenor, and it has since his time descended with the Charbro' property to the present Mr. Drax; but owing to some unfortunate disputes with the neighbouring hunt relative to the boundaries, I grieve to say that that interest which ought rather to unite all sportsmen in the earnest desire to promote the cause of fox-hunting, than by petty jealousies (half of them arising from imaginary causes) to fan the flame of discontent amongst those, who would otherwise have been the chief supporters of the thing, has for so long a period nearly threatened to extinguish the last gleam of hope that there might be for continuing in this neighbourhood the greatest inducement that can exist for gentlemen of property to reside upon their estates. In speaking of the Charbro' country, it is by no means my intention or wish to enter any further into the merits of this unfortunate misunderstanding, but I really think that every one who loves fox-hunting would rejoice to see the quarrel made up, and that sufficient country be given up to Mr. Drax to enable him to hunt with more gularity two and three days a week round that district which is now so seldom enlivened by the melodious music of a pack of hounds. "Through evil report and good report" has Mr. Drax, with pluck and nerve, stood the brunt of this imaginary warfare for years; he has kept a pack of fox-hounds entirely at his own expense for the amusement of that neighbourhood, and done all in his power to show sport in this rough and confined country, beset as it is on every side by vulpecides and enemies. The turn-out of the Charbro' hounds was for years not only equal to any other in the west of England, but to most of those in the more crack countries; the stud of horses surpassed by none; the whippers-in riding on nags that cost a couple of hundreds; and this not a solitary case, but the general system of the ménage. For the last few

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seasons Mr. Drax, whose health has not been the stoutest, has not been quite so regular an attendant upon his pack as he had hitherto been; still the turn-out is capital to this day, and distant indeed may the time be when the old yellow plush coats and black collars shall cease to adorn the huntsman and two whippers-in of the Charbro' hounds. I am sorry to record it, that that now fashionable disease, “kennel lameness," has for some years made sad havoc amongst the hounds of which I am now speaking; every remedy has been tried, but without success, and it is

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but too evident that the situation of the kennel alone is the sole cause for the existence of this insurmountable drawback to the complete formation of a perfect pack of hounds. I don't care what the kennel huntsmanship may be. You may have Squire Osbaldeston, or even the Duke of Rutland, to breed them, you may have Jack Wood or Will Long to feed them, you may have Tom Sebright or Jem Treadwell to hunt them; and after all, if they come out of an unhealthy kennel, the Devil himself can't make them run together.

On Monday, November 29th, I met the Charbro' hounds at "The Decoy," a fixture about two miles from Wareham, on the Blandford road. As the meet had not been advertised, there was but a small field of horsemen who met the hounds at the place; not above three in scarlet and about half a score of regular fox-hunting farmers composed "the crowd" who were to ride to the pack in the excellent run which we were about to experience. After drawing some straggling and open gorse hangings upon the hill to the left, old John Last threw the hounds into the south end of the celebrated Decoy, when they almost immediately found; but the fox hung to the cover, which was excessively thick, and the hounds killed him in about five minutes. They then drew on, and almost immediately found again; there were a brace, if not a brace and a half, of foxes afoot; but one came quickly away, to which the hounds were as quickly halloed, and although divided in three bodies, and running hard through the reeds, they were soon stopped and got together. The fox first pointed for Mr. Edward Digby's plantations on the Poole road, and it was thought that he intended to make his way for Charbro' park, but bearing to the right he ran through the whole of that rough and planted country, and then set his head for the low meadow land below the town of Wareham; from this point the hounds set to running very hard, in fact they absolutely ran away from the horsemen, and crossed the river about a mile to the left of the town; this completely threw out the field, who were obliged to go round to Wareham Bridge, the water and water meadows being perfectly impracticable; luckily the hounds came to a check, from the fox having been headed by a shepherd and his dog, upon reaching the open moor land after leaving the meadows which let in the huntsman and the field; from this point, owing to their losing so much time at the check, the pack were brought to hunting, and the land changing for the worse, their terms with their fox became every moment less favourable; still they hung to his line, and ran and hunted him at a fair pace across that wild district which stretches away for Corfe Castle, where they were eventually defeated, after a pretty run of one hour and ten minutes. What was most extraordinary was, that for ten years a fox had never been known to run that line, which is one of the wildest imaginable; and unless the fox had had a decided point, which is the cliff on the sea coast about five miles further on, one would have supposed that he had been forced completely out of his country: the distance was not so very great from where he was found-in fact, only twelve miles-but, as I said before, the novelty of the line and the wildness of the country were the great charms in the run. In hunting in these "close countries," or, as you may term them, with these private packs (although every pack of foxhounds is, to a certain extent, public to all intents and purposes), there is not one feature about them by which they are, nine times in ten, re