in the matter of his education and his wife. He walked quietly through a public school without even so much as attempting to distinguish himself, or even to join in the boisterous sports of the playground. Cricket and football, strange to say, were to him matters of as much indifference as Greek or Latin, or translations of Virgil and Horace; he knew nothing about it or them, but as his grandfather had gone to school, why he supposed-or his relations supposed for him that he must do so too, and the sooner it was over the better. It was the same with regard to his marriage. He had no more to do with the preliminary arrangements than the man in the moon, but left the matter entirely in the hands of the ladies. How he ever contrived to pop the question-for matrimony is never accomplished, it is understood, without going through that interesting ceremony-has remained a mystery among his friends to this day; but as Charley had a respectable purse and considerable expectations, it is not disrespectful to the ladies to say that a difficulty insurmountable to some men was to him a matter of very easy accomplishment.

No country gentleman can expect to hold his head up among his fellows, or to be distinguished from the common herd, unless he contrives to be put into the commission of the peace and qualify as a magistrate. It is of no consequence in the world that you are wholly unacquainted with the law, provided you have looked after the profits-that is to say, provided you have the necessary pecuniary qualification requisite for the satisfaction of the elastic conscience of the Lord Lieutenant. You may be as ignorant as a sheep itself of the penalties inflicted on mankind for the crime of sheep stealing, and you may be totally unversed in the art of committing a miscreant for the outrageous offence of stealing apples from an orchard-though mayhap an adept in that accomplishment, as you thought it, in your schoolboy days-but despair not; your magistrates' clerk, if he is worth the price of his own vellum skins, leaving the stamps out of the question, will do all that for you, and you may take high rank as a pillar of the State and a defender of the palladium of Britain's freedom.

66

Charley Slap was convenient" in all these matters, but on the question of giving up the hounds, Shylock himself—though perhaps that is not a good simile, because Charley did not love his hounds as Shylock did his ducats-could not have been more inexorable or more deaf to reason. Charley would have his "dappled darlings " as Kingsley calls them, come what might of the determination. Racks and thumbscrews could not have prevailed to make him give up the cherished "dawgs;" and even if the ladies had been suffi

ciently powerful to bend him to their sweet wills, the farmers would never have seconded him in his pusillanimity, and he could never have held up his head among them afterwards. No; "Gallipot Hall had allus had a pack of fox dawgs; and t'ould squire would turn in his grave if he thought they was to be gived up." What mortal man who had the reputation of a long train of distinguished ancestors to uphold could hold out against so potent an argument? The Ghost in "Hamlet" was a fool to it, and Hamlet himself was but a vacillating fool in some people's imaginations, for he could never make up "what he was pleased to term his mind," as a facetious and sarcastic ex-Chancellor has it; but Charley Slap was not a fool, but a very considerable man on the subject of hunting, and his mind was fixed and fully bent thereon, and no mistake about it. The magistracy was mighty fine in its way, especially at Quarter Sessions, when the ladies could disport themselves on the judicial bench, and exhibit their blooming persons and magnificent dresses in the streets of the county town; but not on hunting days, thank you. "On any non-hunting day, my dear," Charley is always careful to say when asked to accompany his wife or-horribile dictu-his wife's relations

of course he has a mother-in-law who possesses a parrot, and the paraphernalia proper to so important a personage-to any great celebration. Non-hunting days are unfortunately of rare occurrence, because Charley himself hunts regularly three days a week, and he is always ready to join any other hunt when within anything like convenient distance; and so it may be perceived by the acute reader, or by one to whom the joys of domestic and married life are not unfamiliar, that by this means were sown in his family the seeds of interminable little domestic difficulties. But still hunting is made paramount to any other considerations, and the amiable Mrs. Slap in course of time and a few "interesting occasions" gave way to her husband's frailties, and is now rather thankful than otherwise to get him out of the house, more especially on washing days, when he used to be a terrible nuisance indoors, and would be popping his not too captivating phiz into every unlikely corner, and retarding business to a woful extent. Charley needed little pressing to be off to the kennel or somewhere, superintending the boiling of the carrion and the feeding of the hounds, for he is one of those who like to do the thing thoroughly, leaving little to chance and next door to nothing to servants, either in point of duty or of gratuities. He feels now that he has a great reputation to maintain, and not overmuch to do it upon. But his is not an expensive establishment, and you would be surprised to learn at how small an expense,

by an exercise of the strictest economy, a pack of hounds may maintained.

be

The ladies are somewhat flattered and gratified, after all, at seeing Charley posted up in "Tintin," at the commencement of the season, among the celebrated M. F. H.'s of the county; and as he lives in a remote locality, there is not much fear of " those writing chaps" or of any great personage paying him an unexpected visit, and viewing the nakedness of the land. But it is a great thing for a young wife, when she goes abroad, to be able to say that her husband is a M. F. H., and to point to "Tintin" for confirmation of the fact. There is no gainsaying it; there it is as large as life, and much more unnatural, and Mrs. Slap is not the kind of woman to keep the public in ignorance of her husband's and her own position, nor to refrain from commenting in laudatory terms on its greatness when that husband is not present to hear her-he, poor man, hears a very different description of the concern.

Charley hunts the hounds himself, and his brother, with the aid of a differentiated gipsy, performs the responsible duty of whipper-in. If Charley Slap himself is not a genius, but rather the other thing, what is to be said of his brother, who is not even capable of whipping-in without assistance? In allusion to this office and its unable administrator such a deprecatory remark has been heard as “Well, hang me, if I was whipper-in at all I'd get a situation under the Duke of Beaufort or some such nob as that, and never perform for my own brother, hang me if I would." Of course this is merely a coarse expression of opinion, which is by no means largely participated in, and no doubt this ambitious junior feels that he is upholding the honour of his family quite as much or more so than his elder brother. Charley sports pink himself, but affords Lincoln green only to his satellites. These are not jealous of his superior equipment, for his coat is of the seedy order, and he would suffer it to split, like King Lear's heart, into a thousand flaws or ere he'd buy a new one. Perhaps we had better not inspect the stud, for they will hardly undergo that operation with the credit usual in the establishments of our great masters of foxhounds. Charley breeds his own colts, and breaks them in himself; so of course he is always badly mounted, and possesses the most miserable lot of vicious screws to be seen anywhere. You may imagine, or you may try to imagine—and that is all you can do what sort of quadrupeds the whippers-in have. If you should pay the hunt a visit, don't let Charley Slap mount you, if you can procure a jackass anywhere else in the neighbourhood; for if you do, you are sure either to get a purl, or to get your legs rasped

against the gate-posts, to burst your girths or to break your reins, to lose a shoe when several miles from a smithy, or to lose your stirrup and break your head.

Charley is always anxious to accommodate his friends with a mount; that is to say, he is always very liberal with his offers to that end, but he does not always intend you to accede to his very pressing request to ride one of his thoroughbreds. He has done his best to break them in; but he has such a set of underpaid rips in the stables that the horses have learnt every trick of which equine nature is capable of acquiring a knowledge. It should never be forgotten, or rather it should be known by everybody who has anything to do with the horse, that that animal does not understand a joke, and that all playing, punching of the ribs, and pinching of the back-bones end invariably in confirmed vice. Yet Charley actually paid ten pounds to learn Rarey's trick-his wife was never apprised of the circumstance and he could perform the coveted operation of "Cruiserising" a horse as well as the great American himself; but the plan was a complete failure-as far as his stud went, at all events. Satan himself would not have terrified them into respectful obedience to a mortal equestrian. But now for the hounds.

These are of a nondescript kind with a very vengeance, commencing with the great hulking foxhound with rounded ears—rather disgusting specimens always-and descending in a graduating scale to the old badger-pied southern harrier pure and simple. Charley is far too knowing a card to incur much cost in keeping up his breed of hounds, and will accept drafts from any kennel when he can do so gratuitously, or for an infinitesimal tip to a neighbouring huntsman ; but his notions of crossing and intercrossing are of the most original and singular kind, and the consequence is that instead of being able to cover the pack, when they are at work, with the proverbial tablecloth, it is no uncommon thing to see the leading hounds in one parish and the tail ones in another. When some first-flight men join the hunt-which, by the way, is a very rare thing, and always “made a note of," on the plan of the late Captain Cuttle-one or two of the old sort are invariably killed; so we may hope that in the course of time the dwarf foxhound will have it all his own way; and we heartily wish Charley Slap better luck next season, and more discretion in the important matter of breeding.

W. F. MARSHALL.

દાહો

CRISPUS.

A POETIC ROMANCE.

RAD I within a little of the light
Revealed to Adonaïs, I might write
To solace other souls; but it may be
The consolation is alone for me.
On many moon nights and on many days
I thought of Adonaïs, and his lays,

Laden with love lilts and fantastic wings
To fan the face and cool the heart's hot springs :
(It was as though a spirit touched the strings-
Some ancient lyrist who had sung in Greece
Of Jason's labours for the Golden Fleece),
And I have sympathised and marvelled too :
He was a prince of poesy that flew

Before the body's death to heavenly bowers,
And brought the secret in the breath of flowers
Unto the wondering world. The simple swain,
Courting a simple maiden in the lane,

Caught sweet infection; and old grey-beard men
Felt a new fire and thought of love again;

But there were wights who worked with pompous brains
To pest the poet for his tender pains,

And laughed though he had soothed with saintly strains.
'Twas pitiful, not strange; the blighted lad
Was lord of graciousness and they were bad :
Their palates were not tempered to the wine-
He cast before them pearls and they were swine.
He wreathed a charm in panting amorous words,
Learnt from old forest hum and noise of birds,
A garland of celestial whispering,

Full of the summer and the flush of spring,
The smell of shaded lanes that lead the way
To cowslip banks and fields of new-mown hay;

As prodigal of scent as rosy June,

As mystical as the big rising moon, VOL. X., N.S. 1873.

GG