too much to expect that, even with all the requisite qualifications I have given him, he should prove an absolute exception to this rule. But this much I will venture to predict of him,-strengthened by the opinion of others better able to judge of them than myself that experience alone is wanting to put him upon a par with any other person in his calling. There is a quickness of decision in his movements in the field, which, tempered and chastened by the before-mentioned excellent schoolmaster, is one of the chief qualifications of the fox-hunter, and without which, on certain days, a good fox cannot be handsomely killed, let hounds be never so good. His lordship's fine horsemanship likewise gives him no small advantage here, as, barring accidents, his eye is never off his leading hounds in their work, and he has a very good man behind him, in his first whip, Joe Hogg, who appears as keen for the sport as his master.' By the bye, an anecdote in confirmation of this may not be amiss here? "Joe," said I to him one day, "how did you feel when you were fol lowing my lord over that bog?" "Lord, sir," he replied," why I expected to be swallowed up alive every jump my horse took; but what was to be done? the hounds was running right into him." The bog was a mile and a half across, and just sufficiently frozen to admit of their horses leaping from one tussuck of grass to another.

I am travelling without my host; I have said nothing of Lord Elcho's hounds; but the best comment upon their character will be found in thẻ sport they showed, which will be noticed in due course." I have no list of them, none having been published whilst I was at Dunse, neither are such things often published so early in the season, for reasons that are obvious to all who follow hounds. Their kennel is about a mile from the town, but various occupations prevented my seeing it. I believe it is only a temporary one, but from the condition and general soundness of the hounds I should imagine it to be healthy, which is worth all the ornaments of architecture put together. The stables, made by Lord Elcho, are in the town of Dunse, and afford every accommodation to a numerous stud of hunters-the ten for his own riding clippers. His lordship's weight does not exceed twelve stone with his saddle, which gives him great advantage; and he is just now in the prime of life, which a man ought to be to follow hounds, still more to hunt them four or five days a week, in any country, and particularly in so deep and so strongly fenced a one as Berwickshire is.

Of Lord Saltoun I need say but little :

These are the words of his countryman Scott, and proud must he have been of the honourable association. Yet, though Lord Saltoun is a hero fit for the pages of Plutarch, it is not as a hero that I have now to speak of him, but in the milder sphere of private life, as a gentleman, a companion, a sportsman, and a friend. And here he needs neither a Plutarch nor a Scott. Whoever knows him, has but one opinion of him, -that he is, in homely language, 66 one of the best fellows in the world ;" and gives the lie to the assertion, that what raises the hero generally sinks the man. Although he was obliged to give up hunting for many years on account of a badly fractured thigh, there is no man fonder of the sport, and no man rode harder than he did over Leicestershire, particularly on his famous horse Spot, which I now have in my mind's eye. But it is not in the field alone he shines; who can beat Lord Saltoun over the mahogany? I would go in the Diligence from hence to Paris-and God knows that would be a high price for me to pay—who have an abhorrence of all such conveyances— to hear him sing "The Man with the Wooden-leg." Independently of the humour with which he sings it, the song itself is most irresistibly ludicrous; and, talk of the unities of a poem, I never met with any in which they are better preserved than they are in this. As I received a kind invitation from his lordship to visit him in the summer and enjoy with him the sports of flood and field, I hope once more to hear the adventures of the one-legged man; and were I not assured that no praise of mine could add a feather to a plume so full as his, I should think I had already said too much of this illustrious Scotchman.

Who comes next? A master of fox-hounds should take the precedence of all others when Nimrod writes, and therefore I introduce to my readers who may not be acquainted with him, a gentleman known in Warwickshire (which county he hunted three seasons in first-rate style) as Mr. Hay, but in Scotland as "Willie Hay," of Dunse-castle; and if I could but persuade myself to believe-with a little addition to it-in the doctrine of metempsychosis, or exchange of souls, I should boldly assert, that "Mr. Hay" in England, and " Willie Hay" in Scotland could not be the same man. But in what consists the fancied transfiguration? Why the character of Mr. Hay in Warwickshire-and I appeal to my brother sportsmen there, if such it was not-was that of a good sportsman, a well-bred gentleman, an agreeable companion; and that was all. Perhaps he acted the part of the cautious hound on a ticklish scenting day, and on fresh ground, and left it to others to throw their tongues on the hazard; but this I can say, on my own experience of this highly respected gentleman on both sides of the Tweed, that Willie Hay, north of the river, is worth a dozen Mr. Hays south of it. That in one, he was merely the agreeable companion; on the other he

NO. LV.-VOL. IX.

G

is the life and soul of every party he is in;-the best teller of a story, with the best stock of anecdotes, and with as much of the original character of his country about him, as any man I am acquainted with. That he is a horseman of the first order, I need not trouble myself to assert; and although not so splendidly mounted as he was when he hunted Warwickshire, he can now "do the trick" when he likes his horse. In a letter I had from Mr. Maxwell, (eldest son of Sir William Maxwell,) after I left Dunse, describing a capital run of an hour and twenty minutes with Lord Elcho, from Press, he concludes by saying that "Hay had the best of it upon Crafty."

Like most of those nags who "have the best of it" at the end of an hour and twenty minutes, Crafty is quite thorough-bred and so is his rider; being distinguished among the Hays-nearly as numerous in Scotland, by the bye, as the Jones's are in Wales-as Hay of Drumelzier, shows that he has the Tweedle blood on one side, and the Hays of Berwickshire, it is well known, were among the most conspicuous of the border chiefs who, amidst feudal broils and foreign wars, rendered themselves remarkable in the annals of their country. Perhaps it was

to be attributed to his being thus bred-a scion of this gallant but turbulent aristocracy-that the gentleman I am speaking of chose to be an amateur spectator of the bloody scenes on the plains of Waterloo, where I am sorry to add his younger brother was killed. This must have been a woful set-off against the satisfaction and the recollection of that glorious victory. But what said the angel to the Peri, at the gates of Heaven?

"Sweet," said the angel, as she gave

The gift into his radiant hand,
"Sweet is our welcome of the brave,

Who die thus for their native land."

I have now to speak of another very celebrated character in Lord Elcho's hunt, equally as well known at Melton, but where he never happened to be whilst I was there, which accounts for our having been strangers to each other previously to our meeting at Dunse. I allude to Mr. Campbell, the Laird of Saddell, and perhaps better known among his friends by his territorial title of " Saddell," than by his real and proper name. But this is not the first time I have had Mr. Campbell in "the book." I got a dressing, I remember, some few years back, from a newspaper critic, who felt squeamish at part of a song I had quoted, describing a run over Leicestershire, in which his horse was represented to be a good deal the worse for having gone "the pace" for best part of an hour with sixteen stone on his back. But it is not only as a good sportsman—as one very fond of hounds, and a very superior horseman that I have to represent Mr. Campbell. It is said that the gods, having taken

pity on the race of mortals, born to evil as the sparks fly upwards, have given them the Muses, and Apollo their leader, and Bacchus their friend, not only to amuse them, but also to reform their manners, and soften their souls, and here we have their representative in the Laird of Saddell*. We have the poet, the songster, the jovial companion, the sportsman, and the horseman, all combined in one man, and that is saying as much as I need say although I could say more. There is more of the gaiety of Anacreon in Mr. Campbell's character than I ever remember to have met with before, and he has poetical talent that might have been turned to a good account had he been obliged to make use of it. He could have written the Pythic ode, and have sung it afterwards.

But my readers shall not take all this on my word alone; I will give them a specimen of his lyrick muse in an off-hand song he made one night in 1833, at Rossie Priory-the seat of Lord Kinnaird-on the occasion of a famous run he had seen in the morning with Mr. Dalyell's hounds, in Forfarshire, and which he sings most delightfully to the tune of, "We have been Friends together," on the words of which it will be perceived to be somewhat of a parody. It is dedicated to Walter Gilmour, Esq. of Melton celebrity, who enjoyed the sport with him.

"We have seen a run together,

We have ridden side by side;

It binds us to each other

Like a lover to his bride.

We have seen a run together
When the hounds run far and fast,
We have harken'd by each other,
To the huntsman's cheering blast.
How gay they bustled round him,
How gallantly they found him,
And how stealthily he wound him
O'er each break and woody dell,

""Twas from Keithwick Broom we view'd him,

As he stole along the vale;

Though we cheerily hallooed him,

'Twas to him a deadly wail;

I need scarcely inform such enlightened readers as mine are, that the allusion to Bacchus is only to be considered in its proper light-as the inspirer of poetry. Parnassus was sacred to Bacchus as well as to Apollo; and Horace says he is justly in the train of the Muses as Cupid is in that of his mother, without whose aid, she herself confesses, she can do but litte execution.

By Lintrose we did pursue him
Despite each fence and rill,
Till his heart began to rue him
On Haliburton hill.

Oh, how they sped together,

O'er the moor among the heather,
Like birds of the same feather,
And their music like a bell.

"By Auckter House we hied him,
Still haunted by their cry;

Till in Belmont park we spied him,

And we knew that he must die!
Through the hedge he made one double,
As his sinking soul did droop,

'Twas the ending of his trouble,
When we gave the shrill Who-whoop!

Oh, now then let us rally,

Let us toast the joyous tally,

And a bumper to our ally,

The gallant John Dalyell."

I must be allowed to dwell a little on this scent. Mr. Campbell, when dressed at night in his scarlet coat, with green facings, and buff et cæteras (the Buccleuch hunt uniform), is one of the finest and handsomest men in his Majesty's dominions; and as along with this pleasing exterior he unites, when in the happy mood, colloquial accomplishments of the first order, and a song for asking for, it is almost needless to observe, that his presence is always hailed as a surety for an agreeable evening. Judging from his stud, I am bound to consider him a firstrate judge of a horse, for it contained some excellent specimens of the only sort of animal that can be depended upon to carry such a weight as his, in the front rank-namely on very short legs, not exceeding fifteen hands three inches in height and some less than that; very well-bred, very steady in their work, and very strong. During his last visit to Melton-and I believe he spent the whole of the season before the last in Leicestershire-he tried I was told an experiment in crossing the country, that his friends say did not answer. This was making his horses leap into, and not over the fences, with the idea of economizing their powers by lessening their bodily exertion; but I have reason to believe it was the occasion of many falls.