ruefully contemplating the hapless four-year-old, who, with head and tail erect, nostril distended, and his feet resolutely planted as widely as possible from each other towards the four points of the compass, offers a flagrant example of that helpless state which metaphorical wags describe as being "done to a turn." Bill is going best. My horse is by no means comfortable, and seems to think a strong severe bit a delightful support to lean upon. Blueskin is lobbing on; but the pace at which he bustled away with the Doctor during the first burst has told tales, and I calculate another seven minutes ought about to finish him. The farmer has been told off a long time. We have been running an hour and twenty minutes, and it is getting dark.

What do I see? another stone wall looming through the rapidly increasing obscurity, and the hounds toping it like a cataract. No power on earth shall induce me to follow that dare-devil Bill in his mad career, and, cautiously dismounting, I establish a gap, through which the still-excited Doctor and myself drag our jaded steeds. How quickly it gets dark! As we remount, and, with much exertion, "boil up" a sort of apology for a canter, Bill and the leading hounds are completely out of sight. Here and there a white speck fleeting along through the gloom, shows where some champion of the kennel is vainly struggling to resume his place amongst his forward comrades, whilst Tumbler" and "Tuberose," their great square heads drooping to the earth as they labour along at my horse's heels, look piteously up at me, as though to say, "What could induce a respectable, steady-going, pack of harriers to embark upon such a harumscarum performance as the present?" For long we have lost sight of the main body, and been guided in our course only by the rapidlyfailing cry of the hounds still in chase. At length this last auxiliary deserts us, and we pull up in sheer despair; for it is now pitch-dark, and the surface of the moor, at no time much to be depended upon, is not to be traversed on horseback except by daylight. The situation. is not without its romance; but the facts are extremely uncomfortable, not to say disheartening. The Doctor's figure looms like some phantom horseman by my side, and although I cannot distinguish his face, the joyous rapidity of his utterance, the triumphant swagger of his tone, betoken that he at all events is entirely satisfied with his heroic achievements and his day's amusement.

"What a run! Mr. Nogo; quite unparalleled, sir, I should conceive. Famous horse this-never was so carried. How far may we be from Wildwood ?-you know the road of course." Alas! I was obliged to confess my total ignorance, not only of the country in which we now found ourselves, and the distance we were from our dinner, but likewise of the whole bearings of this thinly-inhabited district, and of any, the most remote chance there was, that we should obtain shelter for the night. This was a damper, even for the Doctor's enthusiasm; but the excitement had not yet subsided, and he bore it gallantly enough, considering his state of soreness and fatigue. Alas! he was destined to experience a more effectual cooler ere the conclusion of his adventures.

"I think we are on a track," said I, peering over my horse's head, as I fancied his feet rung on somewhat harder soil.

"Shall I get down and feel?" replied my companion, willing at any risk to obtain a change of position.

As the Doctor staggered down from the saddle the sky lifted a little, and enabled us to distinguish a long low line of dark objects that might possibly be farm buildings, and I even fancied I discovered something like a glimmer of light, as it were from a casement, in the indistinct mass.

"All right," said the Doctor, stepping cautiously on in front of his horse, as I called his attention to the probable refuge; "and here there seems to be a road-a white chalk road-if we could but get down this bank to it. What a comfort, a good hard road!" added he, as the indistinct bundle, which I knew to be his figure, disappeared totally from my sight; and Blueskin, tired as he was, started back with a loud snort. In another second a tremendous splash, followed by a succession of plunges and spattering,

"Just like unto a trundling mop,

Or a wild goose at play,"

from my alarmed and totally immersed comrade, convinced me that the Doctor's good hard road was a wide brook, a navigable canal, or some other deceptive form of the comfortless and limpid element.

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Help!" sputtered the Doctor as he came to the surface, where, despite of my most strenuous endeavours, I found it impossible to distinguish him. Help! Mr. Nogo! I shall be drowned!-what a conclusion! and, leaving the horses to their fate, I scrambled down the bank, and found my unfortunate friend standing up to his shoulders in water-for though the brook was of no great depth, it must be remembered that neither was the Doctor a man of colossal proportions→→ and totally unable, even with all the assistance I could render him, to extricate himself from his dangerous and uncomfortable position. A faint moon, struggling through the stormy sky, looked down in pitiless indifference on the clear cold surface of the stream, relieved by our two struggling figures (for I was hauling at the Doctor with might and main), whilst a thick bush of alders and an old pollard willow, standing out against the fitful stormy sky, gave a desolate and hopeless appearance to the scene. What was to be done? haul as I would I could not get him out; and the poor little man, what with cold and apprehension, was fast becoming more and more helpless. In this dilemma, it occurred to me that I had better begin to "holloa" with might and main, and at least take the chance of those buildings being inhabited which I felt confident I had seen. Accordingly I began to roar out, at the utmost pitch of my voice, the alarming cry of "Murder!"-"Help!"-" Murder!" ac companied, though in feebler tones, by the failing soprano of the chattering Doctor. Ere long I had the satisfaction of seeing lights distinetly glimmering at no great distance, and in the direction where I had before supposed there stood an inhabited house; and, as we redoubled our cries and exclamations, we were cheered by the tones of a gruff voice shouting, in accents of mingled anger and anxiety, "Where be ye?-we're a coming!-Here, Giles! Tummas!" till a few more exclamations from the exhausted Doctor brought a powerful auxiliary to our rescue in the shape of a sturdy West-country farmer, accompanied by two ploughmen and a lanthorn, who, after much difficulty in finding out our actual position, and a somewhat prolonged dialogue exchanged between the rescuers on the bank and the sufferers in the bed of the stream-for in my efforts to extricate the Doctor I had myself got in

up to my waist-succeeded in hauling us by main strength to "terra firma," where, with natural curiosity, he proceeded to inquire how we came into our present plight, and what train of events had produced the very unusual spectacle of two dismounted gentlemen, clad in hunting costume, standing waist-deep in water, towards the commencement of a dark and stormy winter's night.

"Glad to see ye, Squire Nogo," said the hospitable yeoman, as he strode before us towards his farm, greedily listening to an explanation. "Glad to see ye, even in such a plight as yon. My men 'll find your horses, I'll warrant, and hounds as well; and, meanwhile, you're heartily welcome, and you too, sir," with which words he ushered us into his ample clean-looking kitchen, where a blazing fire, lighting up all the etceteras of that most comfortable apartment, vividly suggested to us the kindred ideas of supper, warmth, and accommodation, which but a few minutes before had seemed so utterly hopeless and unattainable. The host was in earnest, the hostess active, and the visitors nothing loath to be comforted; and when, an hour afterwards, I stretched my legs beneath the farmer's mahogany, in his best parlour, and surveyed myself in a suit of his homely clothing, "a world too wide" for my less robust proportions, I forgot my hounds, I forgot Bill, I forgot Mrs. Nogo, and, mixing myself a steaming glass of hot gin-and-water— no bad conclusion to a plentiful repast of cold boiled beef, hot eggs and bacon, the richest of home-made butter and cheese, and the strongest of home-brewed ale-I pledged my jolly host, with a lively perception of that merriest of all "symposiums, an accidental jollification-that greatest of all luxuries, rest after labour, ease after anxiety, internal warmth after external cold-in fine, pleasure after pain.

As for the Doctor, to use a common, but forcible expression, there was no "holding him." Enveloped, I may say lost, in the farmer's clothing, nothing much more ridiculous can be conceived than the little man, holding his half-emptied tumbler to his eye and pledging his delighted host with an enthusiasm hardly warranted even by such an occasion as the present. Cæsar after Actium, Napoleon after Austerlitz, Wellington after Waterloo, were but faint examples to typify that hero which the Doctor felt himself in his own person. What was it to him that the harriers were probably lost-that Bill was undoubtedly at that moment bivouacking with a tired horse on the open moor-that he himself would unquestionably be crippled for a fortnight by his day's work, and, in all likelihood, rheumatic for life from his evening's immersion? What was that? Had he not gone a run? Had he not ridden to his own satisfaction, in what would hereafter take its place in the annals of the country as Squire Nogo's day with a wild fox ?" Had he not jumped a veritable hunter over a real stone wall? and was he not sitting in a strange farm-house, the actual impersonation of one of Alken's successful sportsmen, who, having tired his horse and worn out his clothes, is dependent for shelter and costume upon the first stranger that may take pity on his forlorn condition? All this the Doctor felt; and, to give him his due, he acted the character well. As the ginbottle waned, and fresh kettles of hot water steamed upon the hob, so did the still commencing relation of the medico's exploits trench more and more upon the marvellous-border more and more on the sublime, With a vividness of description, not to be brought out by any liquid save

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"hot with," brewed by the orator to his own peculiar fancy, he recounted his adventures and his success. How he had mastered the grey horse" a hunter that nothing but a workman could ride"-how he had viewed the hounds away, and told "Bill" he was sure "it was to be a run "-how he had led the field over the five-foot wall! and distinguished himself when even Mr. Nogo's horse was beat !-how he had preserved his presence of mind when on the point of destruction in "the river at the back of the house, sir;" and how nothing but his extraordinary proficiency in swimming "had preserved him from an untimely death" all this he told again with a delight that, much as it amused our open-mouthed host, it was impossible for him not to share; and when, towards eight o'clock at night, "Bill" made his appearance with the lost hounds and the head and brush of the game fox, that they had gallantly accounted for some twenty minutes after we had declined the chase, and that they had eaten in the dark, with no other witness than my undeniable young whipper-in, whose presence at the finish seemed little short of miraculous-the Doctor, whose triumph wanted but this culminating finale, embraced us all round with tears in his eyes, and, falling prostrate on the ground, was carried off to his dormitory a Bacchanalian Nimrod, feebly struggling with his potations, and to the last endeavouring to describe to us how well he had been going all day, and the exact method in which Blueskin had jumped the wall, &c.

Luckily for my hounds, Bill, though not knowing the least where he was, had hit upon a cart-track, which, after many circumvolutions, at last led him through the darkness to the very farm-house we were occupying, and by ten o'clock men, hounds, and horses, snug and warm for the night, were enjoying that repose which an unusually severe day renders so grateful to man and beast. The last toast proposed by our hospitable entertainer, after we had disposed of the Doctor, was "Suecess to fox-hunting," and I sought my welcome couch with the stentorian refrain of his jolly song, "Tally-ho the hounds, sir," ringing in my ears. Nor was it without many a kind invitation to return, and many a hearty good wish, that he allowed us to commence our homeward journey on the morrow, jaded, stiff, and weary, but triumphant notwithstanding; though I am bound to confess that the Doctor had a splitting headache, and I myself was not without misgivings as to the sort of reception which, after "being absent without leave all night," I should experience from Mrs. Nogo.

LETTERS FROM MY UNCLE SCRIBBLE.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,—

I think I see you, the glow of self-satisfaction lighting up your countenance, when you descend to your breakfast-parlour, in what you imagine to be the most correct of costumes-your want of reflection within having been well supplied by your mirror from without, and that top-boot-and-leather-breeches swagger, which is only the old age of the first round-jacket and pockets of your juvenile

days! What a precious set of grown-up babies we all are, to be sure! and what is it all for?-to ride in pursuit of an animal that smells offensively, and is not good to eat. It is a toy about upon an equality with the other stars and garters of this world. We all have our own fox to ride after; and most of them smell, faugh! villanously, and are not good for much when we've got them. How the politicians are jostling one another just now! and while the slowcoaches are struggling in the gateway, the fast men are over the fence into their neighbour's wheat, and running into their game.

Oh! hang this moralizing! I want you at the breakfast-table. Mind what you eat, and drink, and avoid. Feeding has a great deal to do with constitutional animus. Look at our mercurial neighbours: light breakfasts, light dinners, light suppers, light wines, and light hearts. Chateau Margot and cotelettes au point d'Asperge, fricassées au diable, &c., are not the things to make a foxhunter. Cold boiled beef and undeniable Twining give a coolness and moral weight to the feelings, which contemplate with professional sang froid a five-yearold bullfinch or double post-and-rail. I do not like a chasse café. Dutch courage begins and generally ends in cherry-bounce.

I suppose, for the life of you, you could not mount your hack without a cigar in your mouth. Alexander never smoked a pipe on the back of Bucephalus; and if you want a fine hand and indomitable nerve, eschew tobacco. Look at old Hudson's last year's bill: you may have a park hack for the money. However, 'tis a matter of taste; and if hunting cannot be done without it, I'm the last man in the world to put your pipe out. There, finish your toilette; light your British havannah; and get on your hack, or you will be late for

cover.

If you are a swell you cannot exhibit your bad manners more perfectly than by keeping the hounds and the field shivering in a November fog. And if you are not a swell, you will not be waited for —at least, not in the midland counties; so do not be late at cover.

There are several ways of going to a meet. Do not go on footat least, it is not generally adopted by those who intend seeing the run. Besides, walking in top-boots, especially if tight about the calf, is not an agreeable occupation. There are a few gentlemen in scarlet remains who still do so-one with the Queen's, one with the Pytchley, and one with the Warwickshire. The latter gentleman began hunting in Wales; then he got to Will Staples and the Shropshire; from that he has reached the Warwickshire, and he now threatens Leicestershire or the Pytchley. I suggested the stag-hounds; but he considers jackass-hunting a move in the wrong direction.

You may go by train. An amusing friend of mine, and an excellent sportsman, sometimes adopts it. He is, however, evidently ashamed of it, as he puts it down in his diary as a hack, under the soubriquet of Puffing Billy. First of all you must, in getting there, be sure that it will keep its time. A burst boiler, a stoppage in a tunnel, an inopportune nap, might chance to spoil your hunting. If you resort to this expedient for saving yourself some riding, be sure to look out for a sawbones. There are lots on the rail now-men without any particular practice of their own, but general practitioners -speculators in legs and arms. Keep close to any rather seedy