this particular case, I cannot but think that, with less critical knowledge, an individual connected, by family relations, personal influence, and popularity, with the districts in which he hunts a pack of foxhounds, will ever appear at cover side with more content to himself and his field, and with infinitely better chances of shewing sport, than the stranger, however justly celebrated in woodcraft, who has to contend with the rural prepossessions and local jealousies which are certain to beset him. And, more than this, I am satisfied that the officiating huntsman should be a servant. Of all the public countries in England, which was productive of the most distinguished sport-which shewed, beyond all others, the best runs of the past season? That wherein the master, without laying claim to the character of a crack huntsman, was a nobleman of universal popularity and distinguished munificence, and who placed in command of his pack one of the best professional huntsmen in England.

Come we now to that portion of our inquiry which occupies the middle of the question; the present state and future prospects of foxhunting, being alike concerned in, and dependant upon, the preservation of foxes. It is not necessary (for, unfortunately, the knowledge, like the fact to which it relates, is too general) to particularize the countries that were abandoned, at the close of the last season, from their want of the animals of chase. In the days of our fathers there were men who, from ambition or selfish desire to possess over-loaded preserves, and manors stocked till they became nuisances, secretly connived at the destruction of foxes: none, I believe, who acknowledged or attempted to vindicate the exploit. Our sires would look with small complaisance upon the "bad pre-eminence" of those who, among us, admit, or avow, the ungenerous, un- English practice of vulpicide; but how would they regard such as adopt it as the means of exercising personal spleen-as a channel for inflicting individual annoyance? That such offences polluted the records of the last season, is as undeniable as disgraceful. In West Sussex, where, during the lifetime of that pattern of English gentlemen, the excellent Earl of Egremont, his sons, George and Henry Wyndham, kept separate packs of foxhounds, the sport of the latter has been all but annihilated, at the instance of his brother, the present proprietor of Petworth and its wide domains. The public voice proclaimed it; and as the public appeal made in these pages to Colonel Wyndham, to deny the charge, if he could, remains unanswered, it is to be implied that the accusation could not be refuted.

It may be said, that the vulpicide in West Sussex has already been sufficiently treated of, and exposed, in former numbers of this work; and I may be asked, why I have reverted to it here? Simply because I would select the most flagrant instance that I am cognizant of, the more effectually to arouse indignation against the practice in general, by shewing the base uses to which it has been turned in a particular instance. Surely, surely the aristocracy, the yeomanry of this great rural county, will stand forward to succour and support the first of her field sports in the day of its immediate peril-in the hour of its pressing jeopardy. To time, no doubt, it is destined to yield, and be accounted among the hearty old pastimes of merry England.

Still let us not anticipate a fate, inevitable though it be. Fox-hunting has been the sport of generations of worthies, to whom we can look back with honest pride: it has stirred and fanned to ecstasy the fire of our youth; it cheers and warms the blood that age is chilling within us. Rally, then, round the good cause, sons of a soil to which the chase is native; of which it hath long been the pleasure and the pride. Let not emasculate sentimentality, pedantic presumption, or puffed-up selfishness, deprive of a single disciple a study so full of reward, a lore so emphatically natural, as THE NOBLE SCIENCE!

SCENES WITH "UNCLE SAM."

No. 9.

A NIGHT AND A DAY.

"Last scene of all."

"BACCHI PLENUS," "full of baccy," the soft digester of the day's repast, I lay reclining "a la Great Mogul," stretched out at easy length beneath the shade of the exterior verandah, counting the silver stars, and finding faces in the broad disc of the full moon, as it arose above the massy darkness of the forest; when suddenly the woolly pate of "nigger Joe" popped up before me, like a something from the shades below, and his cracked voice bespoke my listening ear.

"Pleasum, sar, Misser Harry sent um to ax um if yoo will like to go a foxeruntin' out to-night, sar?"

"Oh! certainly,-pray tell your master, I am up to anything he recommends," was my reply; although, to tell the truth, I had not, at the moment, the most distant notion what the darky said, nor to what exploit I had pledged myself.

I was not long in doubt. Before the moon had well “ruz up" above the trees, Harry was at the gate, mounted upon his little bay mare, cracking his whip, and shouting furiously; whilst, in the direction of the kennel, nigger Joe's semiquavers on the hunting horn, and the responsive" bow-wow" of the dogs, shewed mischief brewing for some forest varmint.

"Now then, old fellow, look alive!" shouted Harry. "Come on, got your horse. Be quick, and don't lose moonlight, or we shall never find our fox."

I've

"Our fox!"

"Yes. Didn't that villain Joe tell you that we were going foxhunting?-But come along, or else the game will be so far afoot, that we shall never get at them at all."

Thus urged, I was soon in the saddle, smiling, however, at my own picture of a crack Meltonian's astonishment, if he were called out after dinner for a moonlit fox-hunt. Here, however, it was the constant practice, not a whim.

"It's of no use to look for foxes in the day-time here," quoth Harry, as we struck into the valleys of the forest; "the rascals never leave their holes by day; and it is only in the night that we can find them far enough from home to give us any sport at all. Now, Joe, bring on your dogs: Hey! Rover! Ranger! Roarer! in with you;" and as the hounds ranged slowly through the thicket, we dodged about among the clearer trees, cheering them on, until old Rover challenged

on a scent.

The red fox is but little known in the more southern States, although, at one time, they were plentiful as huckleberries; insomuch that many of the State Governments gave prices for their heads, as for those of the wolves. This system has exhausted them: the only fox now to be found, is a grey animal, smaller than our English "varmint," more "punchy-shaped," and far less speedy. There is a legend of an old red fox existing still, somewhere up in the hilly country of South Carolina, which has been hunted by successive generations far beyond the memory of the oldest settlers, and which is perfectly well known throughout the State by the cognomen of "the old Red." But he is the last and only remnant of his race in the South, the sole survivor of the " thoroughbred."

The present race, the greys, inferior in speed and bottom, make up in cunning what they want in strength. They creep, they swim, they double, twist, and turn,-hiding in hollow logs, running down marshy bottoms, climbing up crooked trees; and when, sometimes, they find an open space, where the young sapling pines crowd close and thickly set together, they jump upon the nearest, and, by successive springs, travel along the bushy tops, full six feet from the ground, to a considerable distance.

It was a strange and novel scene to me, as the hounds pressed upon the scent, waking the midnight echoes with their deep-mouthed music. The moon was now well up, silvering all the topmost foliage of the pines, and throwing their fantastic shadows on our path. The stillness of the night, too, gave a strange and most unearthly echo to our frequent shouts; and, altogether, it required little help from the imagination, to realize the fearful and romantic tales of the ghost-riders of the Hartz, or the wild gallop of the demon huntsmen of the Black Forest.

One while we were upon the summit of a sand-hill, where a soft wind just moved the topmost leaves, and shook the shadows in the moonlight; then, in a moment, we were plunged into a dark and dismal hollow, thick with the brushwood nurtured by some trickling stream; and then, again, we rose upon the hill, and got a lighter and less dangerous galloping-ground; our fox keeping still well afoot before us.

The red glare of a fire, with the black smoke curling up lazily above the trees, caught my eye on the hill-side before us. A nearer approach shewed us a family of emigrants, bivouacking in the forest. Their cart drawn up so as to screen them from the wind; their horses tethered to the nearest trees; and they themselves huddled around the blazing pineknots, and staring, in unfeigned astonishment, at this unlooked-for interruption of their night's repose.

Away we went again,-Harry'in fits, shouting, screaming, cheering, and cracking his whip faster and louder, as his steam got up; and nigger Joe twanging away at his trumpet, and kicking up his long-eared

courser's ribs in regular cruelty-to-animals style. But 1, unused to holding such a rattling pace by moonlight through the forest, fell gradually in the rear, until a false step in a rabbit-hole sent my steed rolling head over heels down a steep pitch, and laid me flat upon my back among a heap of thorns.

We were soon up again, and scampering away in the direction of the sounds, the only guides I had to go by, as I knew nothing of the whereabouts. Over the hills, and down the dales, we went; but nothing was to be seen, although the sounds sometimes broke out so loud, that I imagined myself close upon them, ignorant, as I then was, of the deceptive nature of the forest echoes, which oftentimes mislead the most experienced ear. I stopped awhile, and listened,-but, like the demon noises in "Der Frieschutz," the sounds were in the air-here, there, and everywhere, until they left me quite bewildered; and then they grew fainter and fainter on my ear, until they suddenly ceased altogether.

I was now in a most undeniable dilemma. Before me lay a black and gloomy thicket, scarce penetrable by the moonlight; on either side, a steep and rugged hill descended into darkness; and in my rear stood an array of tall, gaunt pines, waving their lanky arms, and moaning in the rising night-wind; whilst, to increase the troubles of my situation, thick clouds were packing closely round the moon, threatening soon to deprive me of my only help, and change the light to darkness.

I cast my eyes around me hopelessly, and was beginning to despond, when, to my great surprise, and no less joy, I saw a rolling cloud of smoke burst from the forest just before me. The emigrants, whom we had passed, rose up before my mind as the right authors of this fire; but, alas! "the wish was father to the thought," for, when I hurried to the spot, I found no emigrants, but only a large district of the forest wrapt in flames.

There is no sight on earth more grand, more striking, more sublime, than the native forest when on fire. At first, the terrible destroyer creeps along the ground, feeding upon the long dry grass, the dead and broken fragments of the trees, the crispened leaves, the withered pinestraw. But, as it gathers force, and grows in strength, it grapples with the bodies of the living trees, twining its glowing arms around their trunks, and searching out their tender places with its forked tongues; roaring and hissing with its fierceness, until the conquered forest monarch yields, and prostrate falls amid the flames. Sometimes, too, when the wind blows freshly, these fires travel at a wondrous speed across enormous spaces: and I remember one occasion, when I experienced some difficulty in avoiding the effects of one which I approached too nearly, the sole security in such a case being to place some little stream between yourself and danger.

Utterly at a loss which way to turn, or what to do, I did the best thing, namely, nothing, leaving my horse to choose his own mode of proceeding, whether to stop or go; and when, and whither: and thus we wandered on, for, at the least, four hours, when the moon, suddenly breaking cover, shewed me, to my extreme delight, a clearing, and a dwelling straight before me. To hasten to the door, and knock most lustily, was but the work of a moment; and, in immediate response, out