farm-houses stand out, backed by a curtain of mist hanging on the hills in the horizon. With eager eyes you take all in; nothing escapes you; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant and cheerful everything and every one looks! Even the cocks and hens, scratching by the road side, have a friendly air. The turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your pink,' his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don't regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer. Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor-never to be reclaimed, I hope-where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack-a study for Landseer.

"But if the morning ride creates unexecuted cabinet pictures and unwritten sonnets, how delightful 'the find,' 'the run' along brook-intersected vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and villages, showing you in byways little gothic churches, ivy-covered cottages, and nooks of beauty you never dreamed of, alive with startled cattle and hilarious rustics.

"Talk of epic poems, read in bowers or at firesides, what poet's description of a battle could make the blood boil in delirious excitement, like a seat on a long-striding hunter, clearing every obstacle with firm elastic bounds, holding in sight without gaining a yard on the flying pack, while the tip of Rey

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nard's tail disappears over the wall at the top of the hill!

"And, lastly, tired, successful, hungry, happy,the return home, when the shades of evening, closing round, give a fantastic, curious, mysterious aspect to familiar road-side objects! Loosely lounging on your saddle, with half-closed eyes, you almost dream

the gnarled trees grow into giants, cottages into castles, ponds into lakes. The maid of the inn is a lovely princess, and the bread and cheese she brings (while, without dismounting, you let your thirsty horse drink his gruel) tastes more delicious than the finest supper of champagne, with a páté of tortured goose's liver, that ever tempted the appetite of a humane, anti-fox hunting, poet-critic, exhausted by a long night of opera, ballet, and champagne-punch.

"Are you fond of agriculture? You may survey all the progress and ignorance of an agricultural district in rides across country; you may sound the depth of the average agricultural mind while trotting from cover to cover. Are you of a social disposition? What a fund of information is to be gathered from the acquaintances made, returning home after a famous day, 'thirty-five minutes without a check.' In a word, fox-hunting affords exercise and healthy excitement, without headaches or heartaches, without late hours, without the 'terrible next morning' that follows so many town amusements. Fox-hunting draws men from towns, promotes a love of country life, fosters skill, courage, temper; for a bad-tempered man can never be a good horseman.

"To the right-minded, as many feelings of thankfulness and praise to the Giver of all good will arise, sitting on a fiery horse, subdued to courageous obedience for the use of man, while surveying a pack of

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hounds ranging an autumnal thicket with fierce intelligence, or looking down on a late moorland, broken up to fertility by man's skill and industry, as in a solitary walk on the sea-shore, or on a Highland hill."

Here Philip stopped, out of breath, ran his fingers over the old guitar, and hummed Kilruddery, which we forthwith sang in chorus; and had we possessed a copy of the Squire of "Audley Ha's" hunting songs,-the best ever written,—we should, no doubt, have sung them all.

Then came a call on the Civilian for a story, on condition that it should not be about tigers, as we had three weeks of them on the ride up from Maitland.

Well," said Bob Craig, "I will tell you a story of my Gallop for Life."

CHAPTER XI.

A GALLOP FOR LIFE.

"ABOUT twenty years ago, after a fatiguing London season, I was stopping at the decayed port and bathing village of Parkgate, on the Dee, opposite the equally decayed town and castle of Flint. It was a curious place to choose for amusement, for it had, and has, no recommendation except brackish water, pleasant scenery at high water, and excessive dulness. But, to own the truth, I was in love-desperately in love with one of the most charming, provoking little sylphs in the world, who, after driving me half crazy in London, was staying on a visit with an uncle, a Welsh parson, at dreary Parkgate. Not that it was dreary to me when Laura was amiable; on the contrary, I wrote to my friends and described it as one of the most delightful watering-places in England, and, by so doing, lost for ever the good graces and legacy of my Aunt Grumph, who travelled all the way from Brighton on my description, and only stayed long enough to change horses. One sight of the one street of tumble-down houses, in face of a couple of miles of sand and shingle at low water, was enough. She never spoke to me again, except to express her extreme contempt for my opinion.

"Our chief amusement was riding on the sand, and sometimes crossing to Flint at low water. At Parkgate, whence formerly the Irish packets sailed, the fisher-girls can walk over at low water, tucking

up their petticoats in crossing the channel down which the main stream of fresh water flows.

"I was teaching Laura to ride on a little Welsh pony, and the sands made a famous riding-school. I laugh now when I think of the little rat of a pony she used to gallop about, for she now struggles into a brougham of ordinary dimensions with great difficulty, and weighs nearly as much as her late husband, Mr. Alderman Mallard. In a short time, Laura made so much progress in horsemanship, that she insisted on mounting my hackney, a full-sized well-bred animal, and putting me on the rat-pony. When I indulged her in this fancy -for of course she had her own way-I had the satisfaction of being rewarded by her roars of laughter at the ridiculous figure I cut. ambling beside her respectable uncle, on his cart-horse cob, with my legs close to the ground, and my nose peering over the little Welshman's shaggy ears, while my fairy galloped round us, drawing all sorts of ridiculous comparisons.

"This was bad enough; but when Captain Plume, the nephew of my charmer's aunt's husband, a handsome fellow, with a lovely gray horse, with such a tail,' as Laura described it, came up from Chester to stay a few days, I could stand my rat-pony no longer, and felt much too ill to ride out; so stood at the window of my lodgings with my shirt-collar turned down, and Byron in my hand, open at one of the most murderous passages, watching Laura on my chestnut, and Captain Plume on his gray, cantering over the deserted bed of the Dee. They were an aggravatingly handsome couple, and the existing state of the law on manslaughter enabled me to derive no satisfaction from the hints contained in the 'Giaour' or the 'Corsair.' Those