swells," Devonshire is the county
of sportsmen; for although there is very little riding to hounds as
compared with the midland counties, there is a great deal of hunting.
Every village has its little pack; every man, woman, and child, from the
highest to the humblest, takes an interest in the sport; and the science
of hunting is better understood than in the hard-riding, horse-dealing
counties. To produce a finished fox-hunter, I would have him commence
his studies in Devonshire, and finish his practice in Northamptonshire.
On the whole, I should say that a student of the noble science, whose
early education has been neglected, cannot do better than go through a
course of fox-hunting near Oxford, in the winter vacation, where plenty
of perfect hunters are to be hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of
the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where
you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything
desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old
farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average
number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some
of the best horsemen in the world among the Oxfordshire and Berkshire
squires.

Stag-hunting from a cart is a pursuit very generally contemned in print,
and very ardently followed by many hundred hard-riding gentlemen every
hunting day in the year. A man who can ride up to stag-hounds on a
straight running day must have a perfect hunter, in first-rate
condition, and be, in the strongest sense of the term, "a horseman." But
it wants the uncertainties which give so great a charm to fox-hunting,
where there are any foxes. There is no find, and no finish; and the
checks generally consist in whipping off the too eager hounds. As a
compensation, when the deer does not run cunning, or along roads, the
pace is tremendous.

The Surrey stag-hounds, in the season of 1857, had some runs with the
Ketton Hind equal in every respect to the best fox-hunts on record; for
she repeatedly beat them, was loose in the woods for days, was drawn for
like a wild deer, and then, with a burning scent, ran clear away from
the hounds, while the hounds ran away from the horsemen. But, according
to the usual order of the day, the deer begins in a cart, and ends in a
barn.

But stag-hunting may be defended as the very best mode of obtaining a
constitutional gallop for those whose time is too valuable to