"THE KILL WINS!"

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY H. ALKEN.

Coursing may be likened to card-playing, as it is a difficult thing at all times to say how the honours count. Again, it may not be likened to racing; for what is honour in one is dishonour in the other. The horse that cuts out all the work, and keeps four or five lengths in front until within a distance or so from home, gets no credit whatever unless he can keep on, and catch his worship's eye first also. The cunning of man here is often of more effect than the excellence of the animal, as all is made to depend on the scheming and waiting for one little moment's superiority. Vice versa, the dog that does the most work has the highest claim; and cunning and waiting, so far from telling up, are considered amongst the very greatest crimes. The best of the course is not, as in the race, the end of it; and perhaps, more often than not, the kill doesn't win. Still, our orders are to say when it does.

The champions for the Cup, then, have been gradually halved and halved down from sixteen to two-in proper phrase, a brace or a couple, whichever you please. Red for Beds, Black for Wilts, and either for choice in anything from half-crowns to fives. Each has won all his courses out-and-out, so far, and both really look as fresh in the slips as if it was the opening instead of the closing day. Now then, gentlemen, harden your hearts and hasten your bargainssix pounds to five from a Salisbury-plain man on Othello, laid here; and just as the ready reporter has blessed his stars on at last getting the market-price, his record is queried there by an offer of seven to four on our side, from one of the Cardington Club. Done, and done again, from units to tens; so pray, Mr. Steward, order us on, or there's no telling what mischief you may have to answer for.... This way; for over the other side of that fence Plush major tells us he's got a marked hare in reserve, "for this occasion only," that was never touched or marked by any mortal dog yet. There she sits, and-there she goes. Beautifully slipped, by Jupiter! If Mr. Judge can only judge as well as that fellow started then, we shall have fair play for this Wilts or Beds and no mistake. Keeper, too, was as good as his word. She is a big 'un and a game 'un; and if there was time to settle the state of the odds in any other form, we should put it as two to one on the hare. The couple, though, are working well up to her, but running as even as the Siamese twins, or head and head, just like we remember Rat-trap and Hybiscus trying to settle their differences over the Ditch Mile. Wilts gives the semblance of a shout, Bedford has his crow ready in answer; and any man who would go to talk of a go-by, could only be pardoned on the plea of being driven insane with anxiety. Our red-coated referee, with a fixed eye and an industrious heel, urges his horse still faster as they approach the first impediment on this otherwise open down. It is what the artists call "a point of sight" for judge and judged; and, as some horrid man said of the sex, "any

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that hesitate are lost." It is all up then with poor puss; for she makes a sad bungling job of it, while-according to the list" Mr. Higgins's r. d. Harold" flies it beautifully, and picks her up right between wind and water.

"A capital course!" says everybody.

"But an undecided one," says Wilts.

"We'll soon see about that. How say you, Mr. Judge? Which had it?"

"The red dog, of course."

"Told you so-the kill won!" or suppose we say, to suit our book, "THE KILL WINS!"

And thus we close the year 'forty-seven with a couple of fatal effects-one dedicated to the death of a horse, the other " to that of a hare.

even so❞

LITERATURE.

NOTITIA VENATICA. By Robert Thomas Vyner, Esq., some time Master of the North Warwickshire and Holderness Hounds. Second edition. Ackermann, Regent-street." Bookmen," as the Yorkshire feeder termed them, achieve success, like other mortals, in a variety of ways-some by a series of smaller triumphs; others by a single stroke, that makes them "famous" at once. Nimrod began with a modest page or two a month, that gradually reached half a number, and in the end was good and sterling enough to get bound up into a volume itself. He felt his way with the world, and went on as it encouraged. Mr. Vyner, on the other hand, concentrated his strength and experience for one grand effort, and flew where the other crept; both, though, getting well over amidst the loud plaudits of good judges.

We have begun here with a comparison that we have seen, more in sorrow than in anger, some of our friends make too often. Vyner, they tell us, is the best man perhaps that ever wrote upon hunting-certainly the best that has written on it for very many years. And then, to get a little plainer, Vyner knows really more about hounds and hunting than Nimrod could have ever dreamt of, much more have taught. One, in short, kept hounds, and had his heart and study in them, for many seasons: the other was something of a superficial observer, who seldom saw them but in the field, and collected indeed from friends, rather than "drew upon self," for what he did write about them.

Now this may be all very true; but it is all in very bad taste, if not really all very wrong too. No man will ever exalt himself by abusing Nimrod; and no fair comparison as to who shall stand first can be made between him and Mr. Vyner. One might as well try to estimate Macready by Farren, or vice versa. Nimrod wrote for "everybody's home and fireside," as the family papers purpose it; he got people to read about and gave those a relish for hunting, who had only learnt to despise it till he told them otherwise. It was he first "put down" the Squire Western notions, and wrote up the chase with all the ardour of the sportsman and all the elegance of the scholar. Had he, or say could he have gone deeper, he would have defeated his own object. Ignorance and inex

perience would have shrunk back in dismay from the whole arcana of the thing; while the easiness of his tutoring had a very charm to draw the tyro out. We are sure that Nimrod's writings gave the first blood to hundreds and thousands of sportsmen who would never have been sportsmen without them.

The difference then between the two is easily defined. To enjoy Nimrod's works, a man, as the Irishman says, might be a woman, or a complete bookworm. To understand-and that is the first principle of enjoyment--to appreciate "Notitia Venatica" a man must be a sportsman ready made. Business is here the great feature, and riding to hounds less the theme than hunting them. Nimrod wrote all for the field and little for the kennel. Mr. Vyner, in his own words, offers up his work " more particularly to the rising generation of masters of hounds." While Nimrod is going for éclât at the bullfincher, or pitting one crack rider against another for the best of the burst, Vyner is finding, hunting, and killing his fox ; and when, after the finish, the former, armed with the well-telling anecdote, has reached the brilliantly lighted sumptuously-spread dinner table, the latter is still most likely in the kennel feeding the pack of to-day, or drafting that for to-morrow. sovereign sway of fashion had always its influence on the mighty hunter ; with the Master of the Holderness, however, the passion has been of a more engrossing kind—with him, hounds and hunting would have told equally as prince or peasant; and that same ardour which would have made him support them like a prince in the one case, would have urged him to tuck up his smock frock for a scurry with them in the other.

The

We would not have it for a moment supposed from this that we doubted Nimrod's ability as a practical sportsman; he was essentially so, both in print and person. But then, like most of us, he had his points. Another line may be drawn here between him and Mr. Vyner, this time entirely on their characters as practical men. Nimrod divided the subject into two great sections, and wrote continually on horses and hunting; Mr. Vyner's book may be classified under two heads also, but with him it is hounds and hunting. With Nimrod the horse, from natural taste, was all in all; and breeding, riding, and keeping him in condition, the text he chose to dilate upon. His success too was equal to his aim; no man ever did, we had almost said ever can do, so much for any breed of animal as Nimrod did for the English hunter; and let those who are so ready to dispute his claim to "active service" think over what he has thus done before they repeat so manifest an absurdity. Hounds, on the other hand, he treated just as the majority of "fields" do treat them-as a matter of quite secondary consideration. That he admired a fine one, and could appreciate a good hit or a fine cast, we are readily disposed to admit; but that he could have hunted them, or told us how to feed or breed them with anything like a useful authority in his tone, we should hesitate to agree to. Nimrod and his writings represented the meet," or we might say "the audience"-the people who came to be entertained, without caring much about the private rehearsals and preparations made for them. Mr. Vyner, in contradistinction, is "the manager," whose duty and pleasure it has been to have the establishment got and kept in proper form. Nimrod comes up at high-pressure speed, with a swell four-in-hand party from my Lord Duke's; Mr. Vyner has jogged on, hand and heart, in the middle of his hounds from

the kennel door, and sits there awaiting his company, and debating within himself what work is to be, and how it is to be, done.

Though few could ever hope to succeed so well as the great original in that line, we might still find plenty of volunteers ready to write on hunting in a general way-to record rather what they saw than to offer instruction from what they knew. The great want, in fact, has been a work on the chase from some well-grounded man, who could afford, from his experience, food for critics and hints for sportsmen, rather than making up his accounts on the opposite principle. To get up a thorough hand-book of the chase, it ought to be written by a huntsman or a master of hounds-by some one qualified to teach, as far as book learning can teach, those lessons an old huntsman would give his junior by word of mouth. But here arises the great difficulty, those most able being least inclined; for of all the unlikely people to make a pleasure of pen and ink, we should rank your M. F. H. and his prime minister as about the most unlikely. There never was but one man of the sort that did take to, and go through with his subject from end to end, and that one was Peter Beckford. But then Peter, however good and genuine, must naturally get more or less out of date, and somebody was wanting to revise and continue what he had so well opened. Mr. Vyner is the modern Beckford; like him a master of hounds, and like him no less at home in the kennel than when at work with "the eyes of all England" upon him. As we already observed, the hounds are Mr. Vyner's especial care, nec cura canum postrema indeed; and in treating on their management at home and abroad, in and out of the season, he far eclipses even the well-graced actor who preceded him. No one has gone with so much spirit into all relating to the comfort of the pack, and no one could have shown so much ability in completing the labour of love thus engaged on. In short, Vyner on Hunting, is just what Hawker is on Shooting-a book teeming with instructive and well-considered advice in every page, and pointing out many beauties and attractions that a less keen hand would pass over altogether, or, if seen, not half estimated. To masters of hounds "Notitia Venatica" must be a work of continual reference, while a careful perusal of it would go far to make the mere hard rider a good sportsman, and give "the coffee-room" cover-side lounger a real interest in what he does not now half enjoy, because he knows but little of what is going on.

For a second edition we may have allowed our notice to reach too great a length, but our desire has been to do full justice to the merits of Mr. Vyner and the position he occupies as an authority upon the chase. There may also have been a motive beyond this, and the review stand as an argument for the steps we take in procuring materiel for the magazine The author of "Notitia Venatica" is at this very time engaged in paying visits to different packs, on something the same plan as Nimrod made his tours, and for the same pages in which they appeared. As the theatricals say, we consider the engagement "a hit," as we feel convinced that Mr. Vyner's observations will be made with a justice, and carry a weight with them, that none since Nimrod have attained. He will perhaps not be so fortunate in finding "characters," but that's a general complaint in these all-play-at-propriety times; while we are sure he will tell what he sees with equal freshness and vigour, if not with quite so perfect a study of style-shaking hands again with "the noble science" with all the heartiness of a never-forgotten