The "Annals of the Fife Fox-hounds" contains several stirring hunting-songs. One by Mr. Campbell, of Saddell, written at Rossie Priory, Lord Kinnaird's seat, to the tune of "We have been Friends together," was composed on the occasion of a famous run with Mr. Dalyell's hounds in Forfarshire in 1833. The first verse runs somehow thus:

We have seen a run together,

We have ridden side by side;

It binds us to each other

Like a lover to his bride.

We have seen a run together,

When the hounds ran far and fast;
We have hearkened by each other

To the huntsman's cheering blast.
How gay they bustled round him,
How gallantly they found him,
And how stealthily they wound him
O'er each breach and woody dell.

Sir Arthur Halkett is also responsible for the following, which he terms "A Run with the West of Fife":

eyes shone bright, high waved their sterns, Their coats all shone with lustre.

A very famous song which used to be much sung in the counties of Durham and Northumberland was called "Howell Wood; or, The Raby Hunt in Yorkshire." It dates from about the end of the eighteenth century, and I believe was sung to the tune of "Ballynamonaora." I append a few of the verses:

While passing o'er Barnsdale I happened to spy,
A fox stealing on, and the hounds in full cry,
They are Darlington's sure, for his voice I well know,
Crying forward-hark forward ! from Skelbrook below.
With my Ballynamonaora

The hounds of old Raby for me.

See Binchester leads them whose speed seldom fails,
And now let us see who can tread on their tails;
For, like pigeons in flight, the best hunter would blow,
Should his master attempt to ride over them now.
Chorus. With my, &c.

From Howell Wood come, they to Stapleton go,
What confusion I see in the valley below,

My friends in black collars nearly beat out of sight,
And Badsworth's old heroes in sorrowful plight.
Chorus. With my, &c.

m

'Tis hard to describe all the frolic and fun,
Which of course must ensue in this capital run,
But I quote the old proverb howe'er trite and lame,
That the looker on sees most by half of the game.
Chorus. With my, &c.

Then first in the burst, see dashing away,

Taking all on his stroke, on Ralpho the grey,
With persuaders in flank, comes Darlington's peer,
With his chin sticking out and his cap on one ear.
Chorus. With my, &c.

A collection of even the most fragmentary description of English hunting songs could scarcely lay any claim to completion if mention were not made of that most perfect of sporting lyrics, "John Peel.” Surely even the most bigoted of anti-musical huntsmen, and the least intelligent of masher-squires must acknowledge the cheerful swing of this well-known tune, and the graphic picture of the grand old huntsman with his coat so gay. Could anything be more exhilarating than the chorus, which runs :

For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed,

And the cry of his hounds which he ofttimes led,

Peel's view-halloo would awaken the dead,

Or the fox from his lair in the morning.

ま

Verily, "John Peel" may rank as a classic amongst hunting songs, for when its strains cease to rouse the free coursing blood of the keen sportsman or to revive the sluggish heart of the veteran rider, then we shall know that the boasted power of music about which we hear so much is a thing of the past.

COLONEL NEWCOME.

Der Dichter ist angewiesen auf Darstellung. Das höchste derselben ist, wenn sie mit der Wirklichkeit wetteifert, d.h. wenn ihre Schilderungen durch den Geist dergestalt lebendig sind, dass sie als gegenwärtig für jedermann gelten können. Goethe.

Go

They say, best men are moulded out of faults;

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.-Shakspeare.

OETHE tells us that, in art, no youth can be a master; the reason being that youth cannot have mastered the supreme secret of repose. Thackeray, in those great and finished works on which his fame securely rests, in those works by which he will live as the greatest English novelist, shows himself in the calm maturity of that power which is allied with full repose. His chief works have nothing of the fervid impulse and restless fever of youthful effort; while they evince as little of the weakness of age. They give the clearest expression to the fulness of his art-power. Dying, as Shakspeare did, at the early age of fifty-two, he was preserved from the flatness which sometimes attends upon overworked talent or exhausted thought. If anything in his youthful writings were crude and yeasty, that incompleteness is hidden away in anonymous journalism, in which, like his own Philip, he worked in unnoticed obscurity. Thackeray trained and worked his genius in the drudgery of early press-work; but after the appearance of "Vanity Fair" his work is the work of a man full grown in literature and a master in art. The books by which we best know him are all manly and not youthful. His style, too, is wholly mature; easy with the repose of a master. It is, indeed, quite admirable and delightful; bright, soft, clear, limpid in its suave flow; without effort, as without affectation. He can convey the deepest meanings in the simplest language; and can express, with equal mastery, humour and pathos. His style, taken as a whole, seems to me to resemble, in a great degree, the pure and perfect prose style of Goethe. Thackeray combines calm strength with subtle fineness. Altogether a quite admirable style; excellent in the abstract, and yet individual to the man.

There is always something characteristic in the first appearances VOL. CCLXVIII. NO. 1913.

LL

through which great writers introduce their great characters; and Colonel Newcome, in his life as in his death, belongs to the greatest creations of a writer who has designed and drawn for us so admirably so many distinctive men and delicately depicted women. With a turbulent and sorrowful youth behind him, after having loved and lost, after having married without love or happiness, after having obtained the gift of one child, and after having spent five and thirty years as a soldier in India, Thomas Newcome, a colonel by military rank, returns to see his son and to revisit that dear native land which he had left in despair as an ardent youth, with a heart half broken by the loss of the one woman that he could ever, that he must ever love. He had left England in the after-sunset of noblest love passion. And what is this hero's first exploit in London? He met him first in the Cave of Harmony, that is in that old "Coal Hole" which I remember in my youth. In that queer resort, Thackeray introduces us to "a gentleman with a lean, brown face, and long black mustachios, dressed in very loose clothes, who addresses Pendennis and his friends in a high-pitched, but exceedingly soft and pleasant voice, and with a cordiality so simple and sincere that the stranger awoke directly feelings of friendliness and respect." "You have come here, gentlemen, to see the wits. Are there any celebrated persons in the room?" asks the Colonel. Even in such a strange place his influence for good is felt directly. The landlord receives an intimation to the effect that the songs had better be carefully selected; Nadab, the improvisatore, is checked in his mischievous mimicry, and the evening is devoted to innocent lyrics. The Colonel himself sings "Wapping Old Stairs," after the manner of Incledon, and all goes well until Captain Costigan, who has no longer the opportunity of breathing his hiccups into the ear of filial affection, enters-drunk, as usual-and proceeds to sing one of his outrageous ditties. The Colonel's disgust and indignation are finely characteristic of his pure and modest nature; and every man in that unlucky Cave of Harmony feels the uplifted cane of the Colonel as he emits the speech which precedes his exit from that galère. In this little scene, or prologue to the play, Thackeray, with touches few but fine, has sufficiently indicated many of the qualities of his hero. We have already recognised among them chivalry, courtesy, purity, tenderness, and an impayable simplicity which resembles that of the ingenious gentleman, Don Quixote ; though the Colonel has nothing of the don's warp of brain.

Often in human lives there is one incident which, more than all the other many events in a career, colours, influences, and sometimes ennobles a whole life. Such an all-powerful incident was the deep,