COUNTRY PRACTICE.

BY GELERT.

No. II.

In Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire the standard of man's height is inferior to that of other counties in England; a fact which is accounted for by the difficulty of obtaining fuel, and the intense cold of the general clay soil. The peasant man, however, is the only animal that deteriorates in the climate; the bullocks are brave beasts, and the mutton choice eating; the horse thrives on the pasture, and the fox in the cover.

My Lord Southampton hunts a portion of both counties, and Whittlebury Forest, in the centre, extends its dark shades from one extreme of his country to the other. The forest has been the "hunting ground" of the Fitzroys for many generations: here the late Duke of Grafton, in his early days, revelled at peep of day; and here the celebrated Tom Rose, his son Ned Rose, and afterwards George Carter (Mr. Assheton Smith's present huntsman), cheered the Grafton hounds to death and glory-immortal names in the records of Dian. As a scenting country, the forest is first-rate; but the rides, which are well arranged, are heavy and distressing to horses. In the latter years of George Carter's reign, when Stevens and Dickens, the one right-hand man to 'Squire Lowndes, and the other huntsman to the Warwickshire, played second fiddles to him, the music in Whittlebury Forest was inferior to none. Forty minutes was the term of life vouchsafed to a fox, when he was 66 handsomely" found by these artists and their brilliant pack; and, though the forest was then, as it is now, full of riot, deer bounding in all directions, and frequently crossing the line, as well as following the beaten fox, it is wonderful that such never-failing success should have crowned their efforts! No pack in England, at the time they were sold to Mr. Assheton Smith, stood in higher repute than "the Grafton," when hunted by the above trio.

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About the beginning of the present century, nearly fifty years ago, when Robert Bloomfield, author of the Farmer's Boy," visited Whittlebury, he wrote a copy of verses descriptive of the forest :

"Thy dells by wintry currents worn,
Secluded haunts, how dear to me!
From all but nature's converse borne,
No ear to hear, no eye to see,

Their honour'd leaves the green oaks reared,
And crowned the upland's graceful swell;
While answering through the vale was heard
Each distant heifer's tinkling bell.

Hail, greenwood shades, that, stretching far,
Defy e'en summer's noontide power,

When August in his burning car

Withholds the clouds, withholds the shower.

The deep-toned low from either hill,

Down hazel aisles and arches green,

(The herd's rude tracks from rill to rill,)

Roared echoing through the solemn scene."

The poet, though remarkable for his appropriate description of country habits, does not allude to the "country practice" which is the. particular subject of this article, and which, if he had aught of the fire of Somerville in his veins, he would not have omitted on entering a forest dedicated for ages to the service of Diana and the Dryads.

Neither Sherwood nor Windsor Forest boasts of a wilder set of legends than that of Whittlebury. Rangers of ancient date may still be seen in their quaint dresses of Lincoln green, dashing across the glades on fiery steeds, and cheering their hell-hounds with unearthly glee; and woe to the benighted traveller who crosses the line of the doomed victim as it flies before the spectre pack! The great poet Dryden, "the father of all the Nine," is supposed to have gleaned the wild legend he relates in "Theodore and Honoria" from a superstition which still attaches to Whittlebury Forest. A daughter of one of the noble rangers, famed at once for her beauty and coquetry, was an object of the deepest attraction to a gallant young knight; but his love and devotion, though at one time encouraged, were finally treated with coldness and disdain: driven to madness by her conduct, he put an end to his wretched existence by plunging a sword into his heart :

"Long time I dragged my days in fruitless care;
Then, loathing life, and plunged in deep despair,
To finish my unhappy life, I fell

On this sharp sword, and now am damned in hell."

:

But mark the retribution! The lady soon dies, and is doomed to be eternally hunted by the demon knight :

"There, then, we met: both tried, and both were cast,

And this irrevocable sentence passed:

That she, whom I so long pursued in vain,

Should suffer from my hands a ling'ring pain;

Renewed to life that she may daily die,

I daily doomed to follow, she to fly;
No more a lover, but a mortal foe,
I seek her life (for love is none below);

As often as my hounds with better speed
Arrest her flight, is she to death decreed;
Then with this fatal sword, on which I died,

I pierce her open back or tender side,

And tear that hardened heart from out her breast,

Which, with her entrails, makes my hungry hounds a feast.

Nor lies she long, but, as her fates ordain,

Springs up to life, and fresh to second pain,

Is saved to-day, to-morrow to be slain.

Thus, while he spoke, the virgin from the ground
Upstarted fresh, already closed the wound,
And unconcerned for all she felt before,
Precipitates her flight along the shore:

The hell-bounds, as ungorged with flesh and blood,
Pursue their prey, and seek their wonted food:
The fiend remounts his courser, mends his pace,
And all the vision vanished from the place."

The forest of Whittlebury has been well stocked with deer from the days of the first kings of England; and the midnight revelries of goblin huntsmen and their hounds might, in all probability, be traced to the deer stealers, who, to escape detection, gave rise to, and encouraged, a superstition, which has become traditionary in the forest that the cheer

and wild whoop heard by the benighted traveller emanated from beings that had long since passed from this lower world,

Lord Southampton's head quarters are at Whittlebury, where his lordship has fitted up a commodious set of kennels. The floors are of asphalt, which, from its porous nature, usually becomes dry as soon as the water has been swept from its surface, But here it is not so; the water lodges, in consequence of the floors being on a dead level. Kennel lameness, however, has never troubled the establishment: the courts, too, are on the dark side of the lodging-houses, having a cold northerly aspect, and not altogether in accordance with Somerville's directions on the subject:

"Upon some little eminence erect,

And fronting to the ruddy dawn; its courts
On either hand wide op'ning to receive

The sun's all-cheering beams, when mild he shines,
And gilds the mountain tops."

His lordship has fifty couple of hunting hounds in kennel, which are divided for work into a dog and bitch pack; the latter, about twentyeight couple, being kept chiefly for open meets; and the former, twentytwo couple, for cover duty. The arrangement is a judicious one, as far as appearance is concerned; for there certainly is an extraordinary disparity in size between the sexes; the bitches being rather below, and many of the dog hounds rather above, the medium standard. A great number of the bitches, too, are deficient in point of bone. If all were of the stamp of Playful, Agnes, Darling, Promise, Artful, Barbara, Hasty, and Violet (the last in pup by a Rutland hound), his lordship might challenge the world to produce a stouter or handsomer lot of bitches; but, with the exception of these and a few others, they generally want size and substance. Among the dog hounds, Dexter, Denmark, and Manful are remarkably fine hounds, but too large for their associates, and must catch the eye of every man who is at all accustomed to a level and sizeable pack. His lordship has a litter of three-year-old hounds that he has great reason to be proud of: Conqueror, Captain, Comrade, Cruel, and Crazy, out of his Vanity (one of Mr. Harvey Coombe's lot), and by the Duke of Rutland's Conqueror. They are remarkably good hounds in chase, have plenty of substance, equal to the longest day, and in colour are blue-pied. The entry for the present season consists of thirteen couples, principally bred from his own bitches, and by sires from Mr. Drake's, Lord Henry Bentinck's, and his own kennels,

Friday, Nov. 17.-Lord Southampton's hounds at Whistley-wood: the bitch pack on duty found in the cover, and rattled him to and fro merrily for half an hour, when he broke with the pack well at him; the scent, however, was bad in the open, and after a check or two they lost. Trotted away to All ey-thorn copse, where we found number two: ran him hard to Sulgrave, where a most deplorable accident occurred to a favourite horse, belonging to a well-known member of Mr. Drake's hunt. The horse, in landing over a small fence, put his foot into a hole, and broke his leg short off, just below the hock; the animal, however, did not fall, and actually took another jump before his rider became aware of his sad situation. The leg of the poor beast swung round, and seemed as if nothing but the skin prevented its dropping off: of