and the almost leafless hedgerows are all glittering with rime, and, little time lost at dress or breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch-and away to the Trysting-hill Farm-House, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor between him and his joy! With step elastic, he feels flying along the sward as from a springboard; like a roe, he clears the burns, and bursts his way through the brakes; panting not from breathlessness but anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo! the green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat before the door, and two or three tall raw-boned poachers-and there is mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, adventure, and desperation, in that word-while tall and graceful stand the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet eyes, prophetic of their destined prey, and though motionless now as stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like lightning at the loved.

halloo !

Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no trifle,-for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, is, moreover, in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins, at least-and pours out a canty calker for each crowing crony, beginning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and herself; and better speerit never steamed in sma'-still. She offers another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; but it is put off till evening, for coursing requires a clear head, and the same sobriety then adorned our youth, that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for a' things about the place, and sets out with the younkers for a holiday. Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as he may look; and 'twould be well

for this wicked world if no elder in it had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's wife used to call his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!"

Did

And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except, indeed, it merely be some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had time and could afford it, and lived in a tolerable open country, would not keep, at the very least, three grayhounds? No better eating than a hare, though old blockhead Burton-and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was one in this world—in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. he ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commencement, swallow a tureen of hare-soup, with half-a-peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he did—and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no occasion whatever for wishing him any farther punishment. If he never did→ then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England -as you love us and yourself-cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing as melancholy meat-either fish, flesh, or fowl-provided only there be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering about the home-farm seeking for a hare! It is quite an art or science. You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before-and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when probably you were prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they love the fallow-field, that, the stubble-this, you will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland lea-that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken-they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind-that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover-now you may depend on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his

fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the airts-in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant man-is probably a better informed man in the long run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the lie, on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old courser, (him of the Sporting Annals included,) who was not a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we? at the Trysting-hill FarmHouse, jocularly called, Hunger-them-Out.

Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills-for we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the rose-fleet of foot almost as the very antelope-Oh! now, alas! dim and withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms,-slow as the sloth along the ground-spindleshanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon!

"O heaven! that from our bright and shining years

Age would but take the things youth heeded not!"

An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy ascent to the hills-and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, intimates that she is in her old form behind the dike-and the noble dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that her hour is come. Plash, plash through the marsh, and then on the dry furze beyond, you see her large dark-brown eyes-Soho, soho, soho-Halloo, halloo, halloo-for a moment the seemingly horned creature appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts -away fly hare and hounds towards the mountain.

Stand all still for a minute-for not a bush the height of our knee to break our view-and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights-none more, none so much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed at once from a seeming inert sod or

stone, into flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now they are all three upon her-and she dies! No! glancing aside, like a bullet from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle from her straight course—and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting headlong one over the other, all three, with erected tails, suddenly bring themselves up-like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind,— and in a close line-head to heel-so that you might cover them all with a sheet in slips of the Magazine— again, all open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the cliff.

We are all on foot-and pray what horse could gallop through among all these quagmires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the water-cressy and puddocky ditches sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee-up that hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint-shivers down these loosehanging cliffs-through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as iron-over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds-and finally-up-up-up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch of snow?

The thing is impossible-so we are all on foot-and the fleetest keeper that ever flew in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give us twenty yards. "Ha! Peter, the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"-we exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But see-see-they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount-glancing aside, she throws them all three out-yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play be a jewel-and ere they can recover, she is a-head a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead-but she steals away from

them, inch by inch-beating them all blind-and, suddenly disappearing-Heaven knows how-leaves them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides as if indeed about to die in defeat. She carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third time, from three of the best in all broad Scotland -nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most sceptical, that she is― what all the country-side have long known her to bea witch.

From cat-killing to coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of nature-and so is it from coursing to fox-hunting-by means, however, of a small intermediate step-the harriers. Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring the changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country, we have already consigned to merited contempt (though there is no rule without an exception; and, as we shall see by and by, there is one too here), and commend us, even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes-and by judicious horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy-and the shepherd-and the whipper-in-as each hopes for favour from his own Diana-let them all be on foot-and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old fox-but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan labyrinth is the creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges to free