WHEN we read in _Bell’s Life_, the _Morning Post_, or the Northampton paper, that the Pytchley hounds will meet on Wednesday at Crick, we confess to the same sensation which the old coachman is said to experience at the crack of the whip. We call up a picture tinged with the colours of a memory that Time has no power to fade. It seems again to be a soft-eyed morning in the mild winter or the early spring, and the sky is dappled with serene and motionless clouds; whilst here below, a faint breeze from the south whispers of promised fragrance, only biding its time to exude from Earth’s teeming bosom—she sleeps, the mighty mother; but even in repose she is clad in majestic beauty, and instinct with vitality and hope. On such a morning the blood dances through their veins, and her children would fain leap and shout aloud for joy. What freshness in the smell of the saturated pastures! What beauty in the softened tints and shadows of the landscape—leafless though it be! How those bare hedges seem ready to burst forth in the bloom of spring, and the distant woods on the horizon melt into the sky as softly as in the hot haze of a July noon. The _thud_ of our horses’ hoofs strikes pleasantly on the ear, as we canter over the undulating pastures, swinging back the hand-gates with a dexterity only to be acquired by constant practice, and on which we plume ourselves not a little. He is the sweetest hack in England, and shakes his head and rolls his shoulders gaily, as we restrain the canter from becoming a gallop. Were he _not_ the _sweetest_, &c., he would begin to plunge from sheer exuberance of spirits; we could almost find it in our heart to indulge him. The scared sheep scour off for a few paces, shaking their woolly coats, and then turn round to gaze at us as we fleet from field to field. A couple of magpies, after a succession of jerks and bows, while they make up their minds, dive rapidly away over the hedge to our _right_; a direction (for we confess the superstition) ominous of sport. A scarlet coat glances along the lane in front; and, as this is our last bit of grass, and moreover the furrows lie the right way, we catch hold of _the sweetest’s_ head, and treat ourselves to a gallop. Soon we emerge on the high-road, and relapse into a ten-mile-an-hour trot; the _sweetest_, who thinks nothing of twelve, going well on his haunches, and quite within himself. All the best fellows in England seem to have congregated in this highway. Some in dog-carts, some in phaetons, half-a-dozen on a four-horse drag, and others on horseback, like ourselves. With the latter we speedily join company. Yesterday’s gallop—the Ministerial Crisis—the Rifle Volunteers—all the topics that interest us for the time, are touched on, and we learn the latest news of each. By a quarter before eleven we have had pleasure enough for the whole twenty-four hours, and yet our day is only just beginning. Now the plot thickens rapidly. Grooms with led horses are overtaken by their