to see her started--nay, one or two of the wickedest among
them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, "has she cheated the
very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping
ahint her, sair forfeuchen, up the benty brae--and it's no the day that
she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red
Bick, or the hairy Lurcher--though a' fowre be let lowse on her at ance,
and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great big fat lazy
English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food
brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with
five minutes' scamper among themselves--to the middle-sized,
hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel-legged, long-winded maukins of Scotland,
that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland
yardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing
every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as young eagles
ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much
scouring for life as for pleasure--with such an air of freedom, liberty,
and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the
faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine--strong in
bone, and sound in bottom;--see, see how Tickler clears that
twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird--tops that hedge
that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray--and
then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own
length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a
point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel
all his free joyful days. He has walked and run--and leaped and swam
about--at his own will, ever since he was nine days old--and he would
have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets
for him--he takes his meals with the family, sitting at the right hand
of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he
chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church.
That is the education of a Scottish greyhound--and the consequence is,
that you may pardonably mistake him for a deer dog from Badenoch or
Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse
of the antlers on the weather-gleam,

"Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod
To his hills that encircle the sea."

This may be called roughing
it--slovenly--coarse-