The Firs, "standing on a gentle eminence," as the auctioneers have it, look invitingly handy; the day is certainly not half gone, and old Closeshave stops with the gate in his hand, ready to show the way

"Well, gentlemen, as you please you know," repeats the master, with the quiet, good-tempered smile of one who feels his hounds have already done their duty. "As you please. There can be no harm, at any rate, in just drawing these firs the Captain seeins so certain about." The honourable is " quite sure there can't." Even Muster Yeomans agrees we may as well draw 'em now we are here ;" and so, with an echo of his master's smile, Will gives the Captain a nod, and on we go for the Firs."

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'They are going to find a second fox," says Prudence; "and my nag has had quite his fair allowance with the first, and so I'll wish you good afternoon."

"But perhaps they wont find him," returns some more accommodating spirit that most men have under their waistcoats. "Old Closeshave is a jolly old humbug, everybody knows; and he is only too anxious to get us away from his sherry-and I dare say there is no fox there. Besides the hounds' way home is my way, and society to a good fellow isn't exactly a thing to be thrown away-and, anyhow, the top of that hill isn't so much out-"

"Oh, if you come to that," interrupts Prudence a little roughly, "I aint going to make a bother about it; let's go home with the hounds or away with the hounds, as it happens. I don't care, if the mare don't."

"Well, the mare doesn't seem near so much out of sorts as you do, my friend; and so we will go. Here, give us a light, Squire; and let us enjoy this view at the top, if we can't get a view of the Captain's fox."

But Will is ready to do that for us, too, if it is to be done; so-" Loo in there, my lads. Eu! at him again, Conqueror, my man. Eu! push him up there. Get on-get on to him again, my merry ones!"

It is a fine exhilarating scene, at any time-the drawing for a fox in a good country; but it scarcely looks so well the second time of asking, particularly if you have had anything like a run with the first. The half-hour allowed between the heats has just been enough to stiffen the nags, and partially dry the dirt on them and the men's clothes. The very hounds don't draw with that dash that marked their first "charge" in the morning, but "hoik-on" far more methodically and soberly. Everybody, in fact, now it has come to the point, appears to think they might just as well have left the captain and his fox and his "very curious" for another day. Still he may not be here, after all, despite the swagger with which our adviser picks his way up the ride. *

*

*

The Firs are half drawn, and not a hound yet shows a symptom of improving upon that somewhat indifferent air with which he entered them. Even Will's cheer becomes more cheery and confident, as he begins to think his day's work over, and that we shall go quietly home yet, whenhark there!-a challenge deep and strong. "Have at him, Conqueror, my man! Hark to Conqueror, hark!"—and there are twenty ready to back him. There is not much lying in the Firs at any time, and little enough now he can't stop here long, that's certain.

"Hoik-on! hoik-on to him there, urges a whip, with just a cautionary crack to the tail hounds.

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Tally-ho!" sings out the Captain, as a fresh, full-brushed, determined-looking fellow crosses the ride above him.

"Away! Gone away!" is heard from the upper end of the cover, hardly a moment afterwards; and away he is, and no mistake!

*

*

"I thought there was no fox to be found here," says Prudence, as you dig your heels into Margery's sides; "but then they may not be able to keep to him, or he'll be headed, perhaps; and as you only came up here for company, you may as well go on with them, now you have begun again."

Prudence suggests all this with something of a sneer, as "Who is right now?" but there is no time to parley with her, for the captain's friend is threading a line of plantations, with every hound on to him. Their courage is fairly roused again by this; but Margery scarcely warms up so quickly, and it is all we can do to keep on terms with them. D'ye think the mare pulls as hard as she did?" asks Prudence, in that very disagreeable tone she is occasionally in the habit of using.

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But we haven't either patience or leisure to attend her just now, for Margery comes all but on her head at a bit of a drop, which Mr. Hastie flew like a swallow, and old Yeomans dropped into like a duck.

The Captain's fox turned out, in the especial vernacular of that distinguished service," a regular clipper." He is known as such still in the three several counties he touched on. It is not my intention to follow him through the whole of "this splendid day's sport" (as they called it in Bell's Life), for I candidly confess that I did not see it—at least, not right out, from end to end. I went, however, as far and as well as I could, and I must do Margery the justice to add, that she seconded me most nobly. Unfortunately, the further we went, on a proportionately worse understanding did I get with Prudence. It looked, indeed, very like coming to an open rupture, until Margery, herself in a great measure the cause of it, ended the dispute at an awkwardish stile, which she got over, a leg at a time-treating me to a terrible cropper on the other side.

This was the last I saw of it; in which long lingering gaze the tail of Bob Hastie's grey in full flirt occupied a prominent position. I believe he was the last man left with them, but even he can give no authentic finish to the history of our "Second Fox." He was viewed by a keeper, long after the grey cut it, just on the edge of "the great woods," with one hound coursing him, and a few more couple toiling on. If there was a who-whoop, it was Conqueror gave it him.

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*

*

*

*

It was latish before I reached home, for Margery did not travel express,' "and of course we had been running right away from home. Second foxes always do. When I did get back, the greeting was not a very warm one. It is astonishing how at times my wife and that Prudence agree in their tones, and the way of putting their questions. "Why, good gracious, Mr. Softun, where have you been all this time?"

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Been hunting, my dear, of course; where do you think I have been ?"

"Been hunting! Why, as I was coming through the village, not a quarter past two, I met young Mr. Choarist, the curate, coming back,

sir. He told me the hunt was over early, and that you would be home before I should."

Yes, my love, very true. But Choarist left after the first fox." "The first! Why you don't mean to say any of you went after another? A set of hard-hearted wretches! I think you might have been satisfied with one."

"I think we might, my love."

EXTRACTS FROM MY SPORTING JOURNAL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF SCENES AND SPORTS IN FOREIGN LANDS,"

66 EXCURSIONS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA," &c.

"Give, ye Britons, then,

Your sportive fury, pitiless, to pour

Loose on the nightly robber of the fold;

Him, from his craggy winding haunt unearth'd,

Let all the thunder of the chase pursue."

THOMSON'S SEASONS.

A DAY WITH THE ISLE OF WIGHT FOX-HOUNDS.

January 2nd, 1852, beamed forth as mildly on our anticipated sport, as if it had been the merry month of May. A southerly breeze, a soft genial air, and a bright unclouded sky, ushered in the young year, with all the attractions of a vernal morn.

The meet was at Marvel Wood, close to the Kennel, and scarcely distant a mile from the good old town of Newport, where-as I have before observed-we had established our head-quarters for the nonce. We were therefore enabled leisurely to take our time, when summoned after breakfast to the field by some of our boon companions of the previous night. Jones was so fortunate as to have procured a capital mount from one of his island friends; for my own part—having been obliged to rely on the liverystables of Newport for a nag-I found myself provided with a very poor specimen of the equine race, although consoled by old Edwards, the head ostler of the " Bugle," who trumpeted forth my "Rosinante's praise," and assured me that "he was much better than he looked."

Mr. Jackson-my coach-box acquaintance of the day before-mounted on a sturdy brown little cob, joined our party whilst we jogged leisurely along Node-hill, and as he appeared obliging, intelligent, and to be possessed of a fund of local information which he seemed most willing to impart, I marked him for my cicerone during the ensuing day, more especially as from the sedate and steady appearance of his nag, I thought my own Bucephalus might stand some sort of chance of not allowing him to give me entirely the slip.

"Up yonder turning, to the right," said he, "which is called Deadman's lane,' lies our far-famed Castle of Carisbrooke, celebrated as the place of imprisonment of Charles I.-you have of course heard of it as being one of the lions' of the island, and will, no doubt, make a point of visiting it, ere you leave the Isle of Wight."

"I have, indeed, often heard of Carisbrooke Castle," replied I, "but never of such an extraordinary name as the one you have just applied

to the road conducting to it-derived, I conclude, from the great mor tality that must ensue, from the pestilential effluvia of all those open drains, which," added I-talking through my nasal organ, firmly held betwixt finger and thumb-" are enough to breed a very pestilence in the land."

"That's the look-out of the commissioners," rejoined my informant ; "but with all the poisonous stenches left by them for the benefit of the inhabitants of this ancient town, they have, nevertheless, had no hand in the nomenclature of Deadman's lane,' which, as Sir Richard Worsley tells us in his history of the Isle of Wight, is so called for having been the scene of the msssacre of a large body of French troops, who, some four or five hundred years ago, fell here into an ambush, on their way to attack Carisbrooke Castle, then the stronghold of the Island.

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But, behold," continued my informant, as after emerging from the limits of the town, and leaving its odoriferous remembrances behind, we passed the turnpike-gate, and breathed a purer atmosphere, whilst skirting a commanding undulating ridge, Behold, from this point we have a good view of the beautiful valley of the Medina river; which, rising under St. Catherine's Hill-the highest ground in the islandtraverses from south to north, nearly its whole extent, ere falling into the sea at Cowes.

"Yonder, on our left, is St. George's Down, celebrated in the annals of the Isle of Wight; and looming in the far distance, straight a-head, you may see yonder beacon or land-mark, rising above Appuldercombe, the former seat of the Worsleys, and now in possession of Lord Yarborough, who, I am sorry to say, is about to put it up for sale."

We had now reached the locality of our visit of the previous day: Marvel, the residence of Mr. John Harvey, who, with that hospitality for which the Isle of Wight is proverbial, pressed us to enter and partake of the good things with which his board was most profusely spread.

The morning was however too fine for the excuse of even a glass of cherry-bounce; and anxious to see as much as I could of the "meet,' we adjourned to a neighbouring meadow, where, under the hangers of Marvel Wood, were already assembled round the pack a tolerably large, and well-mounted field.

As a stranger, I was first introduced to Mr. Cotton, the Master of the hounds, and received with that courteous urbanity which-as I had already heard--is so characteristic of the man.

Whilst my friend Jones was busily employed in greeting many a sporting acquaintance of former days, Mr. Jackson-who appeared to have completely taken me under his wing-pointed out to my notice several of the habitués" of the hunt, many of whom he personally introduced; and most gladly do I seize this opportunity of bearing testimony to the cordial and friendly reception experienced by a stranger in the hunting-field at the Isle of Wight."

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'Many a man whom you will see here, though mounted on a capital horse, but dressed without any pretension, in his shooting-jacket of velveteen; although modestly calling himself a simple yeoman or unpretending farmer, is, in many instances, the possessor of a good freehold property, with some of the latter, whom I could point out, extending over five, six, or seven hundred acres of productive land-a class of men who would in any other part of England be authorised by custom to append Esquire' as a handle to their name. They, however,