vene before the return of the evening assignations. What wonder, then, if such busy, trifling, effeminate mortals are heard to swear they have no notion of venturing their bodies out-of-doors in the cold air in the morning? I have laughed heartily to see such delicate smock-faced animals judiciously interrupting their pinches of snuff with dull jokes upon foxhunters; and foppishly declaiming against an art they know no more of than they do of Greek. It cannot be expected they should speak well of a toil they dare not undertake; or that the fine things should be fit to work without doors, which are of the taylor's creation."

The Willey Kennels-Colonel Apperley on Hunting a Hundred Years ago Character of the Hounds-Portraits of Favourites -Original Letters-Style.

"Tantivy! the huntsman he starts for the chase,
In good humour as fresh as the morn,
While health and hilarity beam from his face,
At the sound of the mellow-toned horn."

THE style of hunting in vogue in Squire Forester's day was, in the opinion of authorities on the subject, even more favourable to the development of bodily

strength and endurance than now. The late Mr. Thursfield, of Barrow, was wont to say that it was no unusual thing to see Moody taking the hounds to cover before daylight in a morning. The Squire himself, like most other sportsmen of the period, was an early man.

Col. Apperley says: "With our forefathers, when the roost-cock sounded his clarion, they sounded their horn, throwing off the pack so soon as they could distinguish a stile from a gate, or, in other words, so soon as they could see to ride to the hounds. Then it was that the hare was hunted to her form by the trail, and the fox to his kennel by the drag. Slow as this system would be deemed, it was a grand treat to the real sportsman. What, in the language of the chase, is called the tender-nosed hound,' had an opportunity of displaying itself to the inexpressible delight of his master; and to the field—that is, to the sportsmen who joined in the diversion-the pleasures of the day were enhanced by the moments of anticipation produced by the drag. As the scent grew warmer, the certainty of finding was confirmed; the music of the pack increased; and the game being up, away went the hounds in a crash. Both trail and drag are at pre

sent but little thought of.

Hounds merely draw

over ground most likely to hold the game they are in quest of, and thus, in a great measure, rely upon chance for coming across it; for if a challenge be heard, it can only be inferred that a fox has been on foot in the night-the scent being seldom sufficient to carry the hounds up to his kennel. Advantages,

however, as far as sport is concerned, attend the present hour of meeting in the field, independently of the misery of riding many miles in the dark, which sportsmen in the early part of the last century were obliged to do. The game, when it is now aroused, is in a better state to encounter the great speed of modern hounds; having had time to digest the food it has partaken of in the night previous to its being stirred. But it is only since the great increase of hares and foxes that the aid of the trail and drag could be dispensed with without the frequent recurrence of blank days, which now seldom happen. Compared with the luxurious ease with which the modern sportsman is conveyed to the field -either lolling in his chaise and four, or galloping along at the rate of twenty miles an hour on a hundred-guinea hack—the situation of his predecessor was all but distressing. In proportion to the

distance he had to ride by starlight were his hours of rest broken in upon, and exclusive of the time that operation might consume another serious one was to be provided for this was the filling his hair with powder and pomatum until it could hold no more, and forming it into a well-formed knot, or club, as it was called, by his valet, which cost commonly a good hour's work. The protecting mud boots, the cantering hack, the second horse in the field, were luxuries unknown to him. His wellsoiled buckskins, and brown-topped boots, would have cut an indifferent figure in the presence of a modern connoisseur by a Leicestershire cover side." "Notwithstanding all this, however," he adds, "we are inclined strongly to suspect that, out of a given number of gentlemen taking the field with hounds, the proportion of really scientific sportsmen may have been in favour of the olden times."

The Willey Kennels were within easy reach of the Hall, between Willey and Shirlot, where the pleasant stream before alluded to goes murmuring on its way through the Smithies to the Severn. But in order to save his dogs unnecessary exertion there were others on the opposite, or Wrekin, side of the river