assembled household in his library, I do not remember, but once free, Campbell and I would make for the stable, and leading our mare Bessie away to a field, we jumped and tumbled and taught Bessie and ourselves tricks to our hearts' content." This chapter is indeed full of the hairbreadth escapes by flood and field of these two reckless young people. It is small wonder that they both became fearless on horseback and took a leading part in the hunting-field wherever they found themselves. A Dorsetshire woman, and the daughter of one of the little band of divines who combined, not unsuccessfully, the country parson and the country gentleman, Miss Serrell hunted, as a matter of course, with the Blackmore Vale, which was, and perhaps still is, one of the hardest riding hunts in England. Dorsetshire, where, as the poetry of William Barnes reminds us, the language of our Saxon forefathers still lingers, is naturally the home of old English sports and the nursing mother of notable of notable characters. With her father's stories still fresh in her memory, and her own experience to guide her, Miss Serrell has told us of the rise of fox-hunting in Dorsetshire from the days when Mr Chafyn-Grove hunted the first exclusively foxhound pack in England in Cranborne Chasewhere also, by the way, Peter Beckford cheered his hounds and thought out the precepts which make Thoughts on Hunting' the first reading-book of every master and houndsman -up to the time when Mr Farquharson's vast country was divided between five packs of hounds. Of these five, the bestknown is the Blackmore Vale, a country of grass pastures, of stiff banks with hedges atop, of frequent brooks and stiff timber. Thus with many a pleasant sketch of old times Miss Serrell tells us the story of the Blackmore Vale Hunt without the ponderous formality of the ordinary hunt history. There is, in fact, all we need to know, relieved by personal touches and interspersed with apt anecdotes of old-time worthies and their modern successors. Indeed, a rich fund of good stories leads us on from the days of the Prince Regent and his friend Billy Butler to the closing scenes when Mr Merthyr Guest resigned, the old pack was dispersed, and the hunt, though retaining the name and the country, took its place among ordinary subscription packs. And in passing we may note that the chapter on the Kennel shows no superficial study of hound-lore, and, if not so interesting as the lighter pages to the general reader, will be found worth attention by those curious in such matters. But no account of this book would be complete without some reference to the horses that carried Miss Serrell so well, and in her hands were often reformed from the tricks which bad management- the source of four-sevenths of equine vices had taught them. What courage and patience can do, this story of Brilliant may show us. for me. "When I went with my uncle, Mr Dalton Serrell, and my brother Campbell to buy her, she had been in her box for a week, as no one could get her out. At the end of half an hour Campbell and our man succeeded in getting her into the yard, and as I wished to try my hand on her, my uncle bought her As soon as the bargain had been struck I prepared to mount the mare, but here I had to reckon with the farmer, who said he could not allow me to mount her, as she would not stand a habit, and he assured me I should be killed. I represented to him, however, that the mare was now my property, and that if he objected to my doing as I liked with her he must return the cheque. This brought him to reason, and I proceeded to ride her home. The mare was very much afraid of my habit at first, and for a long time she would kick at it on a windy day; but we soon became friends, and she gave me very few falls." We imagine, in these days when the bloodhound is coming into fashion, that a great many people will turn to the chapter entitled "The Bloodhound in the Vale," in which Miss Serrell gives her recollections of Lord Wolverton's famous pack. The English bloodhound is, as his name (the derivation of which is rightly given here) implies, a hound of pure blood. He is the direct descendant of the black St Huberts, and the Comte le Conteulx de Canteleu thinks he is of purer descent than the French St Huberts. The Count, he tells us, has had recourse to our English bloodhound to restore the type and qualities of his own hounds. In couples or singly the bloodhound is а wonderful tracker, but as a member of a pack he was not a success. The vivid language in which Lady Theodora Guest tells of a run with Lord Wolverton, the poetic imagination of Whyte Melville influenced by the splendid gravity and the organ tones of their music, cannot conceal from us that the bloodhound in the chase is wilful, sulky, and capricious. A hound of fine temper and affectionate disposition in private, he has a strong individuality, which he does not willingly merge in the pack. But so fascinating have we found the story of the terriers, the horses, and the hounds, that to wait. Throughout the book the men and women have had Miss are a number of portraits of Blackmore Vale worthies. Serrell's father, the Rev. Henry Digby Serrell, has left behind him many interesting recollections of his friends. The Rev. Harry Farr Yeatman, of Stock House was (a contemporary writer in 1832 tells us) as perfect a specimen of a country gentleman as Stock House (over the beauties and conveniences of which he becomes almost lyrical) was the model of a Dorset country mansion. Yeatman kept a wonderful dwarf pack of fox-hounds, with which he hunted a part of Dorsetshire; and his clerical character is shown in his diary, for in giving an account of his sport he always noted the number of parishes hounds had been through." There are many Mr stories of the famous Billy Butler, another Dorsetshire rector, who was a friend of the Prince Regent in the latter's better mood; for, like the Parson Jack Russell of a later day, who also appears in these pages, the Rev. William Butler was a good preacher and a sound divine as well as a thorough sportsman. But no character is more original and interesting than that of the old "Doctor,' as Isaac Rogers, huntsman to Mr Phelips of Montacute, was nicknamed. A hard, keen old fellow was the Doctor. "One day, when the fixture was at Melbury, a member of the hunt, who overtook the 'Doctor' and his hounds on the way to the meet, remarked that he was tired from the long chase of the day before, to which the 'Doctor son each side of the collar. For the rest they had red waistcoats, white breeches, white tops, black velvet caps, and white gloves"; of John Press, who was huntsman to the Cambridgeshire when King Edward VII. was an undergraduate sound graduate at Cambridge; of Tim Treadwell, whose was a favourite with a former generation of Oxford undergraduates; so through a number of hunting celebrities of Dorset down to the present time. Changes in mastership were infrequent in the Blackmore Vale, and Mr Digby, Sir Richard Glyn, and Mr Merthyr Guest held office for nearly half a century between them. It was during the reigns of the last two that Miss Serrell's hunting with the Blackmore Vale took place, and many a picture of the sport she enjoyed; and the companions she enjoyed it with, she sketches with sympathetic hand. There is much about Mr Guest, the last master of the Blackmore Vale under the old régime, whose firm opinion it was that the safest place is to be first at a fence, an opinion on which he certainly acted. Other noted riders were the late Rev. S. Dendy of Lattiford, the neatest of horsemen ; Mr Digby Collins, still with us, one of the best judges of a hunter of his day; Mr Surtees, a relative of the creator of our old friend Jorrocks, Major Whyte-Melville; and on one occasion the great sportsman, Colonel Anstruther-Thomson himself, one of the greatest of amateur 2 Y bluntly, 'If you be tired with a four hours' ding yesterday, what must I be then, for this be the zevenand-vortieth day vollying that I have hallied to a hound, save and except Sundays." Indeed, the early chapters are full of narratives of oldworld characters, and serve to fill up the gap in hunting annals that exists between the death of Nimrod and the present day. There are accounts of Mr Farquharson, who hunted a district which was literally large enough to make five hunting countries; of the Mr Drax, who had "a great eye for colour in his own and his servants' dress in the field. The latter were attired in canary - coloured plush coats, with blue collars bound with gold lace, and a gold fox with a silver brush on VOL. CLXXVI.-NO. MLXIX. better or horses swifter than now. Our riders are not less bold than their forefathers, and yet no one can deny the coming of changes which may be the forerunners of decay. In the meantime, such books as this will not lack readers, and the careful work of Miss Serrell and her coadjutor, Miss Frances Slaughter, will doubtless gain a deserved popularity. No other woman has yet written a book which like this may stand on our shelves side by side with the works of WhyteMelville or The Druid and the lives of the two Tom Smiths. The style is simple and vivid, the knowledge displayed accurate and full, and the carefully selected portraits are not mere decorations of, but really illustrations to, the text. ODE TO A HORSE-SHOE FOUND LYING IN THE ROAD. O LYING in dishonourable dust, Thou that wert strong beyond all mortal shoon, On the hard labours of thy one brief moon, Th' uproarious environs of thy birth, Thy thankless toil, and transitory worth, I cannot choose but weep, and say, "What are things coming to?" O that the Muses should inform my lyre To sing the violence of thy life's young dawn: How lustily the bellows did suspire Breath for the flames; how redly glowed the fire On the huge Smith, exulting in his brawn; Leapt, and the old black rafters rocked to each reverberate clang. Yet on he wrought with strenuous Ha! and Ho! Till, fully formed, he put thee to the proof Hissed, as beneath Odysseus' pine th' astonished Cyclops' eye. O'twere a subject for enduring song! A theme whereof great MILTON may have dreamt, So thou, made perfect in such toilsome-wise, Clung to the sole, with close embrace and sure; |