in former days, but now my opponent-though I trust only upon paper. Ignorant of his name, I can merely say, that if I knew him once I shall be happy to know him again; and as for the opposition, I know of none, unless it were my taking the liberty of putting a check-rein upon him three years back, for copying two or three pages of my letters on "The Road," and passing them off for his own in the Annals of Sporting. In the article I now allude to, no enmity towards myself, or the drag, is apparent; but Peer and Co. are all of opinion that Tom is a little severe on the stock, the concern being, when he saw it, so completely in its infancy. He cannot be aware of the difficulty of getting fourscore horses together for so fast a coach as the Nimrod, or he would have withheld some of his remarks. Several have been obliged to be changed, and it is only within these last two or three weeks that the stock can have been called complete; and Tom should have recollected what bad weather we had at starting, which, added to sore shoulders, and every thing new, did not add to first appearances. I wanted Peer not to start till the first of April, but, with his usual quickness, he reminded me that that was no day for wise men. As for my own horses, on which Tom is unusually severe (on account, I presume, of old acquaintanceship), I never saw any of them in harness until three days ago. Then two of "those east-off hunters" were at work, and with a full coach they did seven miles and a half in forty minutes, hard held. Sir BelSir Bellingham Graham and the Hon. Captain Wortley were witnesses, and they said they would not wish for a better team. All that I shall add then is-Let Tom Whipcord travel with us again, and I "all think he will see we are right" at last, and that, on my ground, the difficulty is, not to do ten miles an hour, but to prevent the playful rogues going twelve. Tom Whipcord speaks of not keeping time unless so and so is done. Now this makes me take up my pen again, and state, that the first day the coach came up the road it passed through the London turnpike gate as the clock struck five being seventy-six miles in eight hours, with horses never put together before. Since then it has almost always been within time; and why should it not? Ten miles an hour are as easily performed as eight, provided the system be equal to it. If not, the sooner the drag stops the better. Bogtrotter, from Dublin, is entitled to my thanks for his handsome mention of my humble endeavours to amuse or instruct the Sporting World. It is my intention again to turn my thoughts to the subject he alludes to, which he will find I have commenced in some of the preceding volumes, under the signature of Eques. The topic has been a good deal agitated lately, and there is a scientific letter in the present Number, in reference to Arabian blood. There is one expression in it, however, which I do not like, and it ought never to be admitted on such topics. The writer, speaking of some Arabian race horse, says, that he beat every horse at Bombay; travelled across the Peninsula, and beat the choicest horses at Madras, and finally, he believes, at Calcutta. This writer states his opinion that the Cleveland bays have Arabian blood in them. Having just been among them, I venture to say it must be of an cient date, and pretty well crossed out by this time. They are fine animals of their kind; and, if I might so express myself, eminently qualified for quick slow-draught. I perceive a new feature in the present Number-a page set apart for the advertisement of horses, hounds, greyhounds, &c. I think it will add to the value of the publication. Great changes have taken place in the realms of fox-hunting. Mr. Osbaldeston has quitted Leicester shire, and entered upon Northamptonshire Mr. Musters retiring with his hounds to his home country. Sir Richard Sutton would have taken Northamptonshire if he could have occupied Mr. Wood's house at Brixworth, where the kennel is situated; but being disappointed of it, he has for the present retired from the list of masters of fox-hounds, and sold his pack to Mr. T. A. Smith for one thousand guineas. Leicestershire is now vacant, and Quorndon Hall to be sold or let; but no successor to Mr. O. is yet named. As I predicted, the report of Lord Anson giving up his hounds is void of truth. On the contrary, he has a larger entry of young hounds than he ever had before: has just mounted a new uniform hunt-button; and a short time since his Lordship gave Mr. Holyoake a thousand guineas for three of his hunters. In the present dearth of good oatmeal, and its consequent high price, it may not be amiss to inform masters of fox-hounds that, when I left Quorn last week, Mr. Osbaldeston's hounds had just commenced feeding on Smith's biscuits, by which a considerable saving is effected. Smith called on me about two months since, and said he should be happy to contract with any masters of hounds to supply them with biscuits the year round, but I do not now recollect his terms. NIMROD. A FEW LINES FROM THE NORTH. COUNTRYMAN "TO ALTER AND AMEND." SIR, Do abominate mistakes in any way, but more particularly when they shew their ugly face in print. I much regretted, therefore, that my second letter of last month did not arrive in time to correct and to prevent the deforming of your pages by two er rors, which crept into the first edition of my first letter, for the correction of which I must now beg a very limited space. You did well to correct the more important one, by noticing it in your communication to Corre spondents, for which I thank you. I was much out of humour with my old memory upon the occasion ; but as a man had better do any thing than quarrel with himself or his, I have been content to suppose, that it must have been dosing while I was at work at the extracting hark back process. Though relying as I did, without trust, on the accuracy of its response, I was little prepared for its blundering about the pedigree of my favorite Gohanna, and leav ing out, while it traced it, the blood of the good old King Herod. He was the sire of Gohanna's dam, and is well entitled to his share of the reputation earned by her son. Maiden was the grand-dam, and not the dam, as stated in the lets ter, as it appeared. I have also made a trifling mistake about the pedigree of Velaswhose sire I have called Sequez, lim, instead of his brother Rubens. I have also said, that "I had often seen him run, and wondered why he never won ;" which, though all very true, requires explanation, lest it be misunderstood. The fact is, that 1 remembered seeing him and Scamper, by Selim, both belonging to the same owner, running last year at Epsom, Ascot, &c.-the one five times, the other seven; and, being always beaten, I really felt sorry for them. It appears, however, that Velasquez, the year before, when three years old, won three Fifty Pound Plates at Woolwich, Chatham, and Canterbury; so that what I have written, though literally true, might be construed to the disad vantage of the horse, which I should be very sorry for-we have ing all of us enough to answer for, and some of us little enough to recommend us, to protect us from obloquy which we deserve not, and to entitle us to the acknowlegement of any good we have, or have done. No man is the worse of the charity of his neighbours being extended towards him; and if he be sparing of it to others, he must expect that they will not be over liberal to him; but if he writes, he must speak the truth, and that fearlessly. The public are entitled to it at his hands the ties that link the world together require it-justice calls aloud for it-a Voice within sanctions it. Let him steer by her broad light; her noble form will spread her sacred mantle over the observations he may make upon earth, and the things that are of it, as the pole star guides us with his steady and fixed light, when we look aloft, and make them in the heavens -I am, &c. A NORTH COUNTRYMAN. April 7, 1827. THE FINE ARTS. FLEUR-DE-LIS. WE some time since announced that Sir M. W. Ridley had commissioned Mr. Cooper, R.A. to take a portrait of Fleur-de-Lis, which is generally acknowledged dom. Mr. Cooper has executed to be the finest mare in the kinghis commission; and we have reason to believe the Sporting World will consider this portrait among the happiest efforts of that eminent artist. The picture will be in the forthcoming Exhibition of the Royal Academy. We understand that His Majesty has purchased this celebrated mare to breed from, and that she will be placed in the Royal stud after her engagements this season. THE NIGHT-MARE. We have been favored with the sight of a beautiful print after that extraordinary genius Fuseli. The subject is the "NIGHT MARE," and we can confidently recommend it to the notice of our readers as a very faithful transcript of the original, which is, for invention, design, and execution, equal to any of the works of this celebrated Master. Mr. Raddon, the engraver of it, was for many years on the most intimate terms with Fuseli, which may in some way account for the favorable translation he has given of the picture. We conclude with a wish that our readers may possess as many mares as they think fit, but that they may have no Night Mare" but this! quaintance with the Stud Book Mighty Hunter," between Middleton and the Cottesford Heath, on my way to the races, instead of being at Collections in Hall with a Homer and Livy under my arm. Since then I have travelled a good deal, having always an eye to any thing in the sporting line; and when in England, I have been a pretty constant attendant on the various races which have come in my way, as well as in London, where I always dropped in at the Fives Court and Tattersall's on all suitable occasions. BEING an eldest son, and heir to some little landed property in I was brought up as a gentleman at large, (a character described by Sheridan as one who had no visible means of earning his livelihood,) and of the " Ordo"-so much abused by the Morning Chronicle and the writers of the Kingdom of Cockaine-"Rusticus." My female relatives augured favorably of me at first starting in the world, and some went so far as to hint my having some of Will Honeycomb's blood in my veins-inasmuch as I wore a Stultz coat, took wonderfully to Rossini, and was accounted a good performer on a Wednesday night in Willis's* This last summer having been Rooms; besides being a member of passed by me on the coast for the one or two of the exclusive sort of sake of aquatic amusements, I clubs. But I damped their hopes, was induced, late in the autumn, by hinting I found much more to bend my steps towards Britreal enjoyment at a Christmas ball tany, in order to judge with my in one's own neighbourhood, amid own eyes if the shooting was friends who really did care some- really so far superior to other parts what for one, than the most splen- of France or England, as it had did squeeze in Grosvenor-square: generally been represented to me; and the show on a country race- besides the agrèment of getting a course, on a fine day, I could not shot now and then at a wild boar help thinking infinitely more plea or wolf. That I have not had the sing in my eyes than Hyde Park sport I ought to have had is but on a fine Sunday in June or May. true, and from my own fault. I As for Oxford, I was sent to it to did not start till late; and the take a first class; and if degrees night before, quite forgetting my were conferred for a thorough ac- having been all but booked in the The country reader will better understand when I say I mean " Almack's." VOL. XX, N. S.-No. 116. B down mail for a complaint in my lungs only two years ago, I went home bare-headed from a crowded ball-room, with my partner, in a villanous bad night; and not stopping in work, I was confined to my room for a month, instead of slaying the partridges with two worthy compatriotes at Coutances and Granville in Normandy, in my way towards Morlaix ́ ́ ́and Brest. Notwithstanding all this, and a constant succession of wet weather-so much against the trigger in all countries, but particularly in this-I have had more sport than I could well have had in England-battue-shooting* excepted, which I hold in utter fear, horror, and detestation. worse than that of the Spartans The road as far as St. Brieux having been already described in your Number for last September, I shall merely say that the remaining part of the road to Morlaix resembled it much, but gradually growing more mountainous, and the streams, in which there are plenty of excellent trout, being more abundant. Our journey was performed in a sort of opposition coach, named by the French a Concurrence, which has the advantage of the regular one by moving on four wheels, and there being springs to the body of the carriage. On the road I found much amusement, by the extraordinary ignorance and presumption of the French in speaking of England. One of the passengers was editor of the almost only local paper in Brittany, and bore the character of a man of great and varied information. This man would have it, that the English day-labourer was From other information I rethe most miserable creature in ex- ceived, and also having strong istence that the tyranny of the letters of recommendation to some landed proprietors was, if possible, of the principal people of the *The bane of the country-drawing poachers, and driving away the fox-hunters. |