A distinguished soldier of the present day, formerly as daring and enthusiastic a rider as ever charged his “oxers” with the certainty of a fall, was once asked in my hearing by a mild stranger, “Whether he had been out with the Crawley and Horsham?” if I remember right.

“No, sir!” was the answer, delivered in a tone that somewhat startled the querist, “I have never hunted with any hounds in my life but the Quorn and the Pytchley, and I’ll take d——d good care I never do!”

Now I fancy that not a few of our “golden youth,” who are either born to it, or have contrived in their own way to get the “silver spoon” into their mouths, are under the impression that all hunting must necessarily be dead slow if conducted out of Leicestershire, and that little sport, with less excitement, is to be obtained in those remote regions which they contemptuously term the provinces.

There never was a greater fallacy. If we calculate the number of hours hounds are out of kennel (for we must remember that the Quorn and Belvoir put two days into one), we shall find, I think, that they run hard for fewer minutes, in proportion, across the fashionable countries than in apparently less-favoured districts concealed at sundry out-of-the-way corners of the kingdom.

Nor is this disparity difficult to understand. Fox-hunting at its best is a wild sport; the wilder the better. Where coverts are many miles apart, where the animal must travel for its food, where agriculture is conducted on primitive principles that do not necessitate the huntsman’s horror, “a man in every field,” the fox retains all his savage nature, and is prepared to run any distance, face every obstacle, rather than succumb to his relentless enemy, the hound. He has need, and he seems to know it, of all his courage and all his sagacity, as compelled to fight alone on his own behalf, without assistance from that invaluable ally, the crowd.

A score of hard riders, nineteen of whom are jealous, and the twentieth determined not to be beat, forced on by a hundred comrades all eager for the view and its stentorian proclamation, may well save the life of any fox on earth, with scarce an effort from the animal itself. But that hounds are creatures of habit, and huntsmen in the flying countries miracles of patience, no less than their masters, not a nose would be nailed on the kennel-door, after cub-hunting was over, from one end of the shires to the other.

Nothing surprises me so much as to see a pack of hounds, like the Belvoir or the Quorn, come up through a crowd of horses and stick to the line of their fox, or fling gallantly forward to recover it, without a thought of personal danger or the slightest misgiving that not one man in ten is master of the two pair of hoofs beneath him, carrying death in every shoe. Were they not bred for the make-and-shape that gives them speed no less than for fineness of nose, but especially for that dash which, like all victorious qualities, leaves something to chance, they could never get a field from the covert. It does happen, however, that, now and again, a favourable stroke of fortune puts a couple of furlongs between the hounds and their pursuers. A hundred-acre field of well saturated grass lies before them, down go their noses, out go their sterns, and away they scour, at a pace which makes a precious example of young Rapid on a first-class steeple-chase horse with the wrong bridle in its mouth.But how differently is the same sport being carried out in his father’s country, perhaps by the old gentleman’s own pack, with which the young one considers it slow to hunt.

Let us begin at the beginning and try to imagine a good day in the provinces, about the third week in November, when leaves are thin and threadbare on the fences, while copse and woodland glisten under subdued shafts of sunlight in sheets of yellow gold.

What says Mr. Warburton, favoured of Diana and the Muses?

“The dew-drop is clinging
To whin-bush and brake,
The sky-lark is singing,
Merry hunters, awake!
Home to the cover,
Deserted by night,
The little red rover
Is bending his flight—”

Could words more stirringly describe the hope and promise, the joy, the vitality, the buoyant exhilaration of a hunting morning?

So the little red rover, who has travelled half-a-dozen miles for his supper, returns to find he has “forgotten his latch-key,” and curls himself up in some dry, warm nook amongst the brushwood, at the quietest corner of a deep, precipitous ravine.Here, while sleep favours digestion, he makes himself very comfortable, and dreams, no doubt, of his own pleasures and successes in pursuit of prey. Presently, about half-past eleven, he wakes with a start, leaps out of bed, shakes his fur, and stands to listen, a perfect picture, with one pad raised and his cunning head aslant. Yes, he recognized it from the first. The “Yooi, wind him, and rouse him!” of old Matthew’s mellow tones, not unknown in a gin-and-water chorus when occasion warrants the convivial brew, yet clear, healthy, and resonant as the very roar of Challenger, who has just proclaimed his consciousness of the drag, some five hours old.

’Tis an experienced rover, and does not hesitate for an instant. Stealing down the ravine, he twists his agile little body through a tangled growth of blackthorn and brambles, crosses the stream dry-footed with a leap, and, creeping through the fence that bounds his stronghold, peers into the meadow beyond. No smart and busy whip has “clapped forward” to view and head him. Matthew, indeed, brings out but one, and swears he could do better without him. So the rover puts his sharp nose straight for the solitude he loves, and whisking his brush defiantly, resolves to make his point.

He has been gone five minutes when the clamour of the find reaches his ears, twice that time ere the hounds are fairly out of covert on his line; so, with a clear head and a bold heart, he has leisure to consider his tactics and to remember the main earth at Crag’s-end in the forest, twelve miles off as the crow flies.

Challenger, and Charmer his progeny, crash out of the wood together, fairly howling with ecstasy as their busy noses meet the rich tufted herbage, dewy, dank, and tainted with the maddening odour that affords such uncontrolled enjoyment. “Harve art him, my lards!” exclaims old Matthew, in Doric accents, peculiar to the kennel. “Come up, horse!” and, having admonished that faithful servant with a dig in the ribs from his horn, blows half-a-dozen shrill blasts in quick succession, sticks the instrument, I shudder to confess it, in his boot, and proceeds to hustle his old white nag at the best pace he can command in the wake of his favourites. “Dang it! they’re off,” exclaims a farmer, who had stationed himself on the crest of the hill, diving, at a gallop, down a stony darkling lane, overgrown with alder, brambles, honeysuckle, all the garden produce of uncultivated nature, lush and steaming in decay. The field, consisting of the Squire, three or four strapping yeomen, a parson, and a boy on a pony, follow his example, and making a good turn in the valley, find themselves splashing through a glittering, shallow streamlet, still in the lane, with the hounds not a bowshot from them on the right.

“And pace?” inquires young Rapid, when his father describes the run to him on Christmas-eve. “Of course you had no pace with so good a point?”

“Pace, sir!” answers the indignant parent; “my hounds run because they can hunt. I tell you, they were never off the line for an hour and three-quarters! Matthew would try to cast them once, and very nearly lost his fox, but Charmer hit it off on the other side of the combe and put us right. He’s as like old Challenger as he can stick; a deal more like than you are to me.”

Young Rapid concedes the point readily, and the Squire continues his narrative: “I had but eighteen couple out, because of a run the week before—I’ll tell you about it presently,—five-and-thirty minutes on the hills, and a kill in the open, that lamed half the pack amongst the flints. You talk of pace—they went fast enough to have settled the best of you, I’ll warrant! but I’m getting off the line—I’ve not done with the other yet. I never saw hounds work better. They came away all together, they hunted their fox like a cluster of bees; swarming over every field, and every fence, they brought him across Tinglebury Tor, where it’s always as dry as that hearth-stone, through a flock of five hundred sheep, they rattled him in and out of Combe-Bampton, though the Lower Woods were alive with riot—hares, roe, fallow-deer, hang it! apes and peacocks if you like; had old Matthew not been a fool they would never have hesitated for a moment, and when they ran into him under Crag’s-end, there wasn’t a man-jack of them missing. Not one—that’s what I call a pack of hounds!

“The best part of it? So much depends on whether you young fellows go out to hunt, or to ride. For the first half-hour or so we were never off the grass—there’s not a ploughed field all the way up the valley till you come to Shifner’s allotments, orchard and meadow, meadow and orchard, fetlock-deep in grass, even at this time of year. Why, it carries a side-scent, like the heather on a moor! I suppose you’d have called that the best part. I didn’t, though I saw it well from the lane with Matthew and the rest of us, all but the Vicar, who went into every field with the hounds—I thought he was rather hard on them amongst those great blind, tangled fences; but he’s such a good fellow, I hadn’t the heart to holloa at him—it’s very wrong though, and a man in his profession ought to know better.“I can’t say they checked exactly in the allotments, but the manure and rubbish, weeds burning, and whatnot, brought them to their noses. That’s where Matthew made such a fool of himself; but, as I told you, Charmer put us all right. The fox had crossed into Combe-Bampton and was rising the hill for the downs.

“I never saw hounds so patient—they could but just hold a line over the chalk—first one and then another puzzled it out, till they got on better terms in Hazlewood Hanger, and when they ran down into the valley again between the cliffs there was a cry it did one’s heart good to hear.

“I had a view of him, crossing Parker’s Piece, the long strip of waste land, you know, under Craven Clump; and he seemed as fresh as you are now—I sat as mute as a mouse, for six-and-thirty noses knew better where he’d gone than I did, and six-and-thirty-tongues were at work that never told a lie. The Vicar gave them plenty of room by this time, and all our horses seemed to have had about enough!

“‘I wish we mayn’t have changed in the Hanger,’ said Matthew, refreshing the old grey with a side-binder, as they blundered into the lane, but I knew better—he had run the rides, every yard, and that made me hope we should have him in hand before long.“It began to get very interesting, I was near enough to watch each hound doing his work, eighteen couple, all dogs, three and four season hunters, for I hadn’t a single puppy out. I wish you had been there, my boy. It was a real lesson in hunting, and I’ll tell you what I thought of them, one by ——. Hulloh! Yes. You’d better ring for coffee—Hanged if I don’t believe you’ve been fast asleep all the time!”

But such runs as these, though wearisome to a listener, are most enjoyable for those who can appreciate the steadiness and sagacity of the hound, no less than the craft and courage of the animal it pursues. There is an indescribable charm too, in what I may call the romance of hunting,—the remote scenes we should perhaps never visit for their own sake, the broken sunlight glinting through copse and gleaming on fern, the woodland sights, the woodland sounds, the balmy odours of nature, and all the treats she provides for her votaries, tasted and enjoyed, with every faculty roused, every sense sharpened in the excitement of our pursuit. These delights are better known in the provinces than the shires, and to descend from flights of fancy to practical matters of £ s. d., we can hunt in the former at comparatively trifling expense.

In the first place, particularly if good horsemen, we need not be nearly so well-mounted. There are few provincial countries in which a man who knows how to ride, cannot get from one field to another, by hook or by crook, with a little creeping and scrambling and blundering, that come far short of the casualty we deprecate as “a rattling fall!” His horse must be in good condition of course, and able to gallop; also if temperate, the more willing at his fences the better, but it is not indispensable that he should possess the stride and power necessary to cover some twenty feet of distance, and four or five of height, at every leap, nor the blood that can alone enable him to repeat the exertion, over and over again, at three-quarter speed in deep ground. To jump, as it is called, “from field to field,” tries a horse’s stamina no less severely than his courage, while, as I have already observed, there is no such economy of effort, and even danger, as to make two small fences out of a large one.

I do not mean to say that there are any parts of England where, if hounds run hard, a hunter, with a workman on his back, has not enough to do to live with them, but I do consider that, cÆteris paribus, a good rider may smuggle a moderate horse over most of our provincial countries, whereas he would be helpless on the same animal in Leicestershire or Northamptonshire. There, on the other hand, an inferior horseman, bold enough to place implicit confidence in the first-class hunter he rides, may see a run, from end to end, with considerable credit and enjoyment, by the simple process of keeping a good hold of his bridle, while he leaves everything to the horse. But he must not have learned a single letter of the noble word “Funk.” Directly his heart fails, and he interferes, down they both come, an imperial crowner, and the game is lost!

Many of our provincial districts are also calculated, from their very nature, to turn out experienced sportsmen no less than accomplished riders. In large woods, amongst secluded hills, or wild tracts of moor intersected by impracticable ravines, a lover of the chase is compelled by force of circumstances to depend on his own eyes, ears, and general intelligence for his amusement.

He finds no young Rapid to pilot him over the large places, if he means going; no crafty band of second-horsemen to guide him in safety to the finish, if his ambition is satisfied with a distant and occasional view of the stirring pageant; no convenient hand-gate in the corner, no friendly bridge across the stream; above all, no hurrying cavalcade drawn out for miles, amongst which to hide, and with whom pleasantly to compare notes hereafter in those self-deceiving moments, when

“Dined, o’er our claret, we talk of the merit,
Of every choice spirit that rode in the run.
But here the crowd, Sir, can talk just as loud, Sir,
As those who were forward enjoying the fun!”

No. In the provinces our young sportsman must make up his mind to take his own part, to study the coverts drawn, and find out for himself the points where he can see, hear, and, so to speak, command hounds till they go away; must learn how to rise the hill with least labour, and descend it with greatest dispatch, how to thread glen, combe, or dale, wind in and out of the rugged ravine, plunge through a morass, and make his way home at night across trackless moor, or open storm-swept down. By the time he has acquired these accomplishments, the horsemanship will have come of itself. He will know how to bore where he cannot jump, to creep where he must not fly, and so manage his horse that the animal seems to share the intentions and intelligence of its rider.

If he can afford it, and likes to spend a season or two in the shires for the last superlative polish, let him go and welcome! He will be taught to get clear of a crowd, to leap timber at short notice, to put on his boots and breeches, and that is about all there is left for him to learn!

In the British army, though more than a hundred regiments constitute the line, each cherishes its own particular title, while applying that general application indiscriminately to the rest.

I imagine the same illusion affects the provinces, and I should offend an incalculable number of good fellows and good sportsmen, were I to describe as provincial establishments, the variety of hunts, north, south, east, and west, with which I have enjoyed so much good company and good fun. Each has its own claim to distinction, some have collars, all have sport.

Grass, I imagine, is the one essential that constitutes pre-eminence in a hunting country, and for this the shires have always boasted they bear away the palm, but it will surprise many of my readers to be told that in the south and west there are districts where this desideratum seems now more plentiful than in the middle of England. The Blackmoor Vale still lies almost wholly under pasture, and you may travel to-day forty miles by rail, through the counties of Dorset and Somerset, in general terms nearly from Blandford to Bath, without seeing a ploughed field.

What a country might here be made by such an enthusiast as poor “Sam Reynell,” who found Meath without a gorse-covert, and drew between thirty and forty “sure finds” in it before he died!

Independently of duty, which ought to be our first consideration, there is also great convenience in hunting from home. We require no large stud, can choose our meets, and, above all, are indifferent to weather. A horse comes out so many times in a season; if we don’t hunt to-day we shall next week. Compare this equable frame of mind with the irritation and impatience of a man who has ten hunters standing at the sign of “The Hand-in-Pocket,” while he inhabits the front parlour, without his books, deprived of his usual society and occupations, the barometer at set fair, and the atmosphere affording every indication of a six-weeks’ frost!

Let us see in what the charm consists that impels people to encounter bad food, bad wine, bad lodgings, and above all, protracted boredom, for a campaign in those historical hunting-grounds, that have always seemed to constitute the rosiest illusion of a sportsman’s dream.