BARON ROTHSCHILD'S HOUNDS AND COUNTRY.

BY CRAVEN.

From the ashes of the ornamental annuals a race of practical volumes, published at similar intervals, might profitably arise. Were any enterprising bookseller to enter upon the undertaking, he would find "A Hand-book of the Hunting Countries of Great Britain"-which should appear yearly, corrected up to the commencement of each season—a very popular work. Such a guide is greatly wanted. Why should not a man be told where to go for a good pack of hounds and a good country to follow them over, as well as where he may find the most perfect picturesque, or rely on the most correct cuisine? When, a few years ago, a series of hunting maps was given in "The Sporting Review, it was said that some masters of hounds objected against them, on the ground that they afforded strangers facilities for visiting their districts. The idea of making the chase an exclusive sport is about the most mischievous that could enter into the contemplation of any one having a hunting establishment. It is a rural amusement, wholly dependent upon popular countenance. No gentleman in England could hunt through a single season without the leave and support of his neighbours. He may buy a manor, and shoot it, or fish it, or perhaps course it, in all the sublimity of seclusion; but he can only hunt on particular sufferance, be he who he may. I am not going to defend the taste, or to canvass the loyalty, of the landed proprietor who warned the consort of the Queen from off his premises, on pain of an action for trespass: I do but refer to the fact as confirmation strong of my position. With a view to serve the cause of the noble science, as well as to afford matter for, the assistance of a weary hour, in the absence of a more regular work on the subject, I have begun, and purpose (with a blessing) to continue, these notices of the leading packs of hounds within negotiable distance of the occasional seeker of hunting. The man who adopts the chase professedly stands in need of no such aids: he has his stud at some popular rendezvous, or some point locally or socially suited to him; and thither he goes when in the vein, or there he pitches his tent during the season. These fortunati nimium, however, form the exception, and not the rule, of woodcraft. The habitués of a pack rarely constitute a tithe of its field. Hundreds of good sportsmen and true are fain to content themselves with a run, or the chance of it, when Providence vouchsafes to allow them the possibility. Some good angel begs, borrows, or steals them a holiday; and the question that instinctively suggests itself is"Where shall we hunt?" London (which is peopled with the majority of those whose circumstances, in every sense of the phrase, place them in a condition now and then to snatch a day from Mammon, to find a

little annuity of health and boon enjoyment) hears the query whispered by thousands of anxious soliloquists, as often as an open day dawns between Michaelmas and Easter. These are no mere cockneys-no Gilpins -serenaded into existence by the bells of Bow, but haply sons of such destiny and taste as once induced the occupant of a second-pair back to make it his stable and kennel and all. For such I indite these notices, as a labour of love.

In confirmation of the proverb, "Example is far beyond precept," apparently it would be difficult to adduce stronger evidence than the rural life of the Barons Rothschild, as at present pursued in the county of Bucks. When I had an opportunity, the other day, of observing it, I could not fail to remark how strikingly it presented the beau ideal of the career of the squirearchy that whilom dwelt remote from cities, and led lives all unconsious of Almack's, and as little troubled about Cocker as about the Koran. As I looked around me from the trivia of the little hamlet of Mentmore, I could not choose but contrast it with the locality I visited one afternoon of the last autumn, hard by the shore of the Maine, and muse upon the chance which breeds a taste in a man. Had Frankfort never parted with these gentlemen (I pondered), what would probably have been the last thing it would have been possible to induce them to do? To trust themselves upon the back of sixteen hands of thorough-bred English horseflesh, and execute forty minutes' best pace over the Vale of Aylesbury, to the music of a pack of hounds. I can conceive a German taking to the spirit of yachting: I can imagine him becoming careless of drowning, upon the principle of its being better to be dead than out of the fashion, and no exertion required; but I cannot compass in fancy his cultivating pace under any fortuitous combination. The sporting barons of Mentmore, I am aware, are English in their generation; but, had I not enjoyed experience of their habits, it would never have occurred to me that the phlegm of the land of their origin could have been got rid of without a filtering of many centuries. That it has been brought to pass is emphatically and artistically shown in the preparations and materiel for woodcraft accumulated in the village What it might have been previous to the hunting establishment of these wealthy and spirited patrons of the chase being pitched within its fortunate precincts, I know not at present it is as pretty a toy of a town as you could meet with in a Tunbridge-warehouse. A few cottages, au naturel, are sprinkled on either side of the road leading to the unpresuming place of rustic worship, and between them several in the style distinguished as the ornamental. These belong to the huntsman and his assistants. Further on to your left is the villa of the millionaire brothers, a structure of a most modest bearing, framed in a woodbine-hung verandah; and to your right the stables-snug, well-to-do buildings, in red brick and flourishing circumstances. Midway between the rear of Roffey the huntsman's cottage and that of Tom Ball, the whip, is placed the kennel, well found, in every sense of the word. With the breed, seed, and descent of its inmates the reader need not be troubled; it is only in especial cases that the family history of a pack of hounds-its genealogy and items of domestic detail-can be at all tolerated in this instance it will be sufficient to say-and no one will have any difficulty in believing the assertion-that, as no care or

coin was spared in the selection, the kennels at Mentmore are occupied by suitable tenants. That they can go quite fast enough, is written in the elegies of the harts of grease which, during the current season, have fallen before their fleetness.

To keep the equipage of my narrative, however, in proper order-in the common vernacular, not to put the cart before the horse-I will tell the occasion of my making the acquaintance of this pet shrine of Diana, and then go on with so much of its hunting history as my knowledge will afford. In the first moiety of last month there was held a steeplechase among the habitués of the barons' hunt, and over the cream of their home country. It is very rarely I attend at ceremonials of the kind, because they are opposed both to my humour and my humanity. As there is said to be no accounting for taste, it is unnecessary to assign a fanciful reason for the former; in reference to the latter, my prepossession for avoiding steeple-chases will not be held very capricious when I state, as the result of observation, that, when an event of the sort takes place, it is more usual for a horse engaged to be killed than for the field to get over it without a fatal casualty. The friends of the amusement urge that there is nothing in it beyond the powers of a hunter: "Are not the leaps all fences to be met with in a day's hunting?" they ask; as if four miles in a hunting run were ever done, since the days of Actæon, at the speed of four miles in a steeple-chase. In this miscalled sport it is indeed the pace that kills. I have invariably remarked that the whole of the ground is done while the animals are extended as in a race over the flat. There are fences which cannot be so got over safely, except by chance; for instance, the double, which must be done at twice,' as the technical phrase goes; that is, "on and off." No living thing without wings can make sure of its footing while in full swoop. Does a man in chase ever charge a double without pulling his horse? does a steeple-chase rider ever take anything except in a fly"? For the fate, the melancholy fate, of the professors of that dreadful trade, need more be said than is known to those who witnessed the condition to which it reduced the gallant Becher, or the state in which it has left poor Barker?

I have no sympathy with steeple-chasing, yet I went to witness this passage of it, inasmuch as one was to make his début in whom I felt interest, partly for the love I have for a boon ingenuous spirit, and partly for the esteem in which I regard certain members of his family. Against that intention, I heard it whispered, the point of pedigree would be raised. It was not; but that in no degree relieved the contingency of its exquisite absurdity; and yet we cannot wonder at the course contemplated by those scrupulous steeple-chasers when we call to mind the many examples of men of sound sense and noble principle taking leave of their wits on the subject of gentility. This was Walter Scott's case if, indeed, he was not a keener satirist than he has the credit for. Take his Baillie Nicol Jarvie and Rob Roy as an instance. The Lowlander is the target for his finger of scorn-the Highlander the observed of all his observance, and his hero for no cause that he explains, save that the former was a common councilman, and the latter a common thief this paid his debts with the coin of the realm, that with a slash of his claymore. It might be inconvenient to inquire how far the gen

tility of the south in modern days resembles that of the north in the olden time.

Apropos of station, that of the London and Birmingham Railway at Euston-grove is a proper introduction to a most proper line, where they carry you and charge you like a gentleman: your gentry like good accommodation on good terms. By this rail you reach Tring in an hour or so, where there is a very excellent hostel, and cherry-brandy to match—the former the Harcourt Arms. Here Lord Lonsdale has a considerable stud, and other gentlemen hunting with the barons have their horses. His lordship has purchased the White Cross harriers, whose kennel is in the neighbourhood-at Tring Grove, I think. A pleasant ride (occasionally, if you prefer it, across country) leaves you, at the end of five miles, at Mentmore. I got to head quarters early in the afternoon of the steeple-chase day, and, as business was only in the first stage, strolled about to ask news and see the sights. A good many sporting men had already got together, for Mentmore is the centre of a very sporting circle. It is surrounded by Mr. Drake's, the Oakley, and Mr. Lowndes's countries-the latter the very Eden of the fox-hunter; moreover, the vicinity is, so to speak, a golden region, having of late years become, almost without exception, the property of Messrs. Rothschild, Jones Loyd, and Robarts. Evidence of this proprietorship meets your eye everywhere, if you look through it with a philosophical glance: you see, indeed, no cottages built more for ornament than use, or gardens copied from the south of France," but snug, substantial homesteads, occupied by a race cared for as the British yeomen ought to be everywhere cared for-a colony-to all the members of which is meted out the rural justice which Pope speaks of

"Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer."

This district

And should not a man be as fairly dealt by as an ox? being in the hands of practical economists, you find in a practical condition—a state balancing between profit and comfort: instead of dwellings got up after pictures of the florid Gothic, its cottages are filled with a bold peasantry in florid health. I wish this portion of the Vale of Aylesbury might be adduced as a sample of the rural life of England generally.

The characteristically steeple-crowned heights of Upper Wingbury and Mentmore are divided by a noble sweep of undulating grassground, the middle of which is Wing Park, consisting of land eloquent of prize beeves, marrow, and fatness. Over this the course lay-fair hunting ground; indeed, well were it for the chase if its lot were always chosen in such pleasant places. There were three brooks and perhaps five-and-twenty leaps, the fences all "stiff;" the last of the brooks, as planned for the line of horses, after three miles of the best pace, just the sort of thing to make the animals which should attempt it in a concatenation accordingly. Very properly, however, the flags were shifted to a more negotiable place, and there, at all events, no mischief happened. As in all non-professional races, a wonderful waste of time occurred before matters were at all looking like a result; and when I had left some of the cavaliers mounted at the post, I met, a

couple of miles from it, some of the cavalry being led towards it, as if the start was fixed to take place by moonlight. All this annoyance might be obviated by the simple plan of naming a time for starting, because most people have watches, however bad judges they may be of the pace of the hour-glass bearer, and causing the start not to be delayed more than five minutes beyond it under any pretence whatever. By dint of patience, the lot was got together on the wrong side of four P.M., which, to those who intended seeing all the programme run off, and had the visions of turbot and et ceteras ordered fifty miles distant for seven punctually, was a most melancholy look-out. The party consisted of nine-the stakes of five guineas a piece. At the word, away they flew, the lead taken by the son of Mr. Anderson, of Piccadilly, a youth not yet sixteen years of age, on a nag called Nonsense, a clever, clean-looking chesnut, thorough-bred, or thereabouts. Two others were next to him, but considerably astern, for he was a good distance clear of everything at the third fence, which he did with the science of a perfect artist. The pace over the hill to Wing Park was very severe, and had told, by the time they reached the first brook, on Mr. Hall's Prince. In taking it, no doubt he fractured the bone of the near hind-leg, and, staggering over the next double, fell to the earth, whence he never arose with his life in him. There were some alterations of places, and some total "cutting" of it, from distaste and other causes; but over the last brook and into the last field young Anderson led gallantly, looking all over a winner. When, however, within a distance of the winning-post, his horse seemed to shut up all at once; and Mr. Milton on Tory, and Mr. Baker on President, challenged and went by him, the first winning by some two or three lengths. Mr. George Samuels, a cousin of the barons, officiated as judge, and gave-most correctly, as I still think, though there are others under a different impression-the second place to President. Elated, no doubt, at being safe and well over it, Mr. Milton was out of his saddle the moment he had stopped his horse, and, on the rules of horse-racing, he was pronounced distanced. Hereupon ensued a wrangle; the winners by Tory putting it to Mr. Baker as a question of honour that he should not claim a race forfeited through mistake; the winners by President affirming that he had no voice in the decision, seeing that, as bets follow the stakes, it would be dealing with other people's money. How it ended I cannot tell; how it ought

to have been decided there cannot be a doubt. After another mortal pause of two hours, a second chase over the same ground was run, in which, at one place the fence out of Wing Park-four out of the six that started were down one on the top of the other. Nobody was killed; but, as nobody got up till Roffey, on a horse of Mr. Davidson's, was up, and a couple of fields off, of course the victory was very decisive. Some odd things came off in this race; one of the jocks-a daring devil, and a most accomplished horseman, on as strapping a hunter as ever faced a stiff country-was so paralyzed by some means or other, that he never made the ghost of an attempt at going, but sitting, as Shakpeare says, "like a forked candlestick," ambled after the racers in such guise as the riding-masters at Brighton take their pupils for an airing up and down the Cliffe, on a summer's afternoon. It is stated, I should have observed, that the stakes being awarded in the first race to Mr.