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and the handicaps have abolished heats for the one sport, lo! Dick Knight and Lord Sefton invented second horses for the other; if the B. C., and such like days' work, are few and far between, the drag up to him is still more a rarity; and last and best of all, the summer in the house gave the hunter an equality in the point of care and condition that he never previously could have dared to aspire to. In short, the only objection possible to the thorough horse for the purposes of the field soon came to the small matter of his thin skin and fine coat. There is not protection enough naturally, said the old ones, for a horse so highly bred to go bruisingly across country: he will be perpetually funking the thorns and bushes, and so try to fly his fences so far above harm's reach that it will be no less a dangerous than a difficult task to ride him. In some few instances this may perhaps be tolerably correct: young horses especially are apt to show the noli me tangere temper; but still it is a fault which, generally speaking, time and work will take out of them. At any rate, it cannot be a very serious failing when we come to consider how much has been done to render the half-caste even more liable to the same complaint: if the silky coat of the Hero does make him a little shy of the Pytchley blackthorns or Bicester doubles, surely the poor shivering wretch, "all shaven and shorn" as he is of his rough, thick, curly covering, will or would shun the "screwing through" system quite as determinedly. We are not fond of giving out maxims; but if ever we do commence a string of them, the first on the list shall be that no man clips a thorough-bred horse. We have certainly seen some cases of it, but then it was more frequently owing to the unhappy taste of the owner than to any real necessity for it in the constitution of his horse. If only just decently looked after, not one nag in a hundred who gives a reference to the Stud Book will require the aid of scissors or soap; and what a recommendation of itself ought this plain fact to be! Of all the vulgarly distressing signts one meets with, we know of none worse than that of a black-booted over-dressed dandy on his closely clipped or cleanly shaved Bucephalus. There he sits, on a raw misty December day, at the grand opening of some large cover, without a care or a thought of the poor shiver-andshakery devil whose bristles are all on an end, and his fine bang tail tucked close into his quarter. And what, pray, is the moral what? can be the aim of all this? If you want to go well, do not decide against the thorough-bred ones: if you want to look well, still bear them in mind; and if you want one in particular just at this moment, take our friend Cheap Jack at his word, and write a draft for the Hero at two hundred.

The star of the High-Mettled is scarcely yet on the decline

"Alike born for sports of the field and the course,
Always sure to come through a staunch and fleet horse."

He has carried the smart-looking huntsman of a crack country to the end of a good thing in a good place. He is still full of life and strength; still well looked after and well deserving of it; still showing all that courage and imposing appearance which have hitherto distinguished him. There is no direct call on our sympathies yet; though, as the doctors say, "the crisis" is coming on.

BLUE DEVILS AND FOREST CHARM S.

BY GELERT.

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So few and so transitory are the joys of life, that in moments of reflection we are naturally led to wonder why man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward," and why drudgery and disappointment should be the common lot of the mass of mankind; the rich, the poor-the high-born vested in fine linen, and the low-born in rags -that each should have his skeleton?

"To each his sufferings; all are men

Condemned alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,

The unfeeling for his own."

Collision with the world confirms the fact, and enlightens every sceptic on the point; and the more we mingle with the busy hum of life, the more certain are we of gathering fruit bitter and biting in its character. Niebuhr remarks that "the most monotonous domestic life is the happiest," nor am I prepared altogether to disprove the philosopher's axiom, however little I may be disposed to put it to the test. A country life, as it is least marked by incident, is unquestionably the most even if not the happiest-though Johnson says "London is the only place fit for a man to live in"-and if the ruralist have a turn for field sports, he may find much to reconcile him to his lot, much to compensate for the crosses with which the world may assail him. After all, however, it cannot be denied but that three-fourths of the blue devils which prey upon us are imps of our own creation, monsters that, like Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein," haunt and horrify their creator.

For a fortnight in every year-a week at spring-tide, and a week in the fall-I regularly retire from this world of woe to the Forest of the Druids, Dartmoor, not to do penance among its shrines and cromlechs, not to bow the knee to the charms of nature and solitude, but to meet half-a-dozen other spirits wilder than the waters of the Dart, devotees of Dian, and lovers of all that is cheerful, good-humoured, and social. Here the old world is forgotten, cast behind us, and a new one created by ourselves; here, as lords of the creation, we revel like Centaurs o'er the mossy plain, "without a mark, without a bound," and for a while indulge in an utter forgetfulness of the past, and an utter insensibility to the future. There is an elasticity in the air of this mountain region which makes you feel young and lusty as an eagle; especially at the fall of the year, when, far in the vale below, all nature is moulting and the vegetable world sickening with decay, the "sere and yellow leaf" producing a corruption from which it is well to escape then indeed is the moor air healthful and invigorating to the senses; then, by comparison, are its virtues most truly to be appreciated.

A short description of our ménage, intrinsically sporting, may not be uninteresting. A large and commodious farm-house in the heart of the moor, with stabling for twenty horses, hives the party. A

pack of harriers is attached, and parks in the neighbourhood are good enough to give convenient meets, so that each day is made out for the all-absorbing sport. A glance at my journal will suffice to give the reader a notion of the bill of fare::-

MONDAY, Oct. 26.-Sir Henry Seale's hounds, at Stanboroughgate. Drew Ritson-brakes and got on the scent of a moved fox; hunted up to him in Burraston-covers, where he had fresh kennelled; had a smart burster of thirty minutes, and killed near Ash-waters.

TUESDAY, 27.- Mr. Trelawny's hounds, at Holne Cot: hic habitat rex occidentalis, John, King of the West, late master of the Hambledon. Found in Whitewood, crossed the Dart at Compstone, by Luk's Tor, Sharpiton, to New-bridge, where he was headed by an old womanbad enough had it been a young one-back over the Moor, again across the Dart, and to ground in Langham-marsh.

WEDNESDAY, 28.-The P. M. P. harriers at Larton: found two hares in the open, wild moor; ran both and killed. The first stood thirty-five minutes; the second an hour and ten minutes.

THURSDAY, 29.-The Devon hounds at Sherwood. Found a brace of foxes, and earthed one.

FRIDAY, 30.-The P. M. P. at Riddon-ridge: found and ran three hares; killed two, and put the third to ground in Lartor-rock after a sharp burst of forty minutes. The scent was so good that nothing could live before them, and but few of the stud with them. I can fancy the twist of the nose which many an uncompromising foxhunter will give on perusing the performances of a pack of harriers, while his choler rises at the presumption of the chronicler in committing them to these pages. But, reader, be assured he is ignorant of the merits of a Dartmoor hare, and knows not that her course is "as straight as the crow flies;" he knows nothing of the style of country over which she takes you, nor of the glorious scent which that country ever holds! Here are no fences to baulk you; every turn and hit of the hounds can be seen

"Where wilds immeasurably spread,

Seem lengthening as you go."

And if your horse can go, he has here a fine field for distinguishing himself. Doubtless a fox and a foxhound stand pre-eminent, but let no one condemn hare-hunting when it interferes not with the more noble diversion, and is followed as a pis-aller pastime besides,

"Trahit sua quemque voluptas."

"Why should not every one enjoy his own rule?"

TUESDAY, Nov. 3.-Mr. Trelawny's hounds at Glaze-bridge (in the diary of my life this meet stands marked as A.1.); the morning wet and muggy, but towards ten o'clock showed symptoms of improvement; the fogs gradually lifted on the tops of the Moor-hills, and a warm, steady breeze sprung up from the S.W., which argued fairly for the day. The hounds were thrown into Over-Brent cover; in less than ten minutes a hound or two whimpered, and Limpetty cheered; the rest quickly filled in, and the fox was afoot. He broke cover just at the upper corner on the north-eastern side, and went away straight for Shipley Tor; by this he passed like an arrow, with his head pointing to the open moor, by the strong earths of Lower and Upper Woolholes,

"Where he might have got in, but he chose to keep out;"

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