adays there are half a dozen individuals who have reduced
riding to hounds to such an art that no pack can get away from them in a
moderately easy country. These "bruisers" of the hunting field ought to
be made to carry three stone dead weight; they should be "trashed for
overtopping." However, as Brooksby has tersely put it, "Some men hunt to
ride and some ride to hunt; others, thank Heaven! double their fun by
doing both." There are many, many fine riders in England who will not be
denied in crossing a stiff country, and who at the same time are
interested in the hounds and in the poetry of sport: men to whom the
mysteries of scent and of woodcraft, as well as the breeding and
management of hounds, are something more than a mere name: men who in
after days recall with pleasure "how in glancing over the pack they have
been gratified by the shining coat, the sparkling eye--sure symptoms of
fitness for the fight;--how when thrown in to covert every hound has
been hidden; how every sprig of gorse has bristled with motion; how when
viewed away by the sharp-eyed whipper-in, the fox stole under the hedge;
how the huntsman clapped round, and with a few toots of his horn brought
them out in a body; how, without tying on the line, they 'flew to head';
how, when they got hold of it, they drove it, and with their heads up
felt the scent on both sides of the fence; how with hardly a whimper
they turned with him, till at the end of fifty minutes they threw up;
how the patient huntsman stood still; how they made their own cast: and
how when they came back on his line, their tongues doubled and they
marked him for their own." To such good men and true I dedicate the
following lines:--

A DAY IN THE VALE; OR, THE THRUSTER'S SONG.

You who've known the sweet enjoyment of a gallop in the vale,
Comrades of the chase, I know you will not deem my subject stale.
Stand with me once more beside the blackthorn or the golden gorse,--
Don't forget to thank your stars you're mounted on a favourite horse;
For the hounds dashed into covert with a zest that bodes a scent,
And the glass is high and rising, clouded is the firmament.
When the ground is soaked with moisture, when the wind is in the east
Scent lies best,--the south wind doesn't suit the "thruster" in the least.
Some there are who love to watch them with their noses on the ground;
We prefer to see them flitting o'er the grass without a sound.
We prefer the keen north-easter; ten to one t