course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles--and now ventures from the wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the number--and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship--and now, in momentary contrition, "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!" and we bethink ourselves--alas! all in vain, for "_Naturam expellas furcâ, tamen usque recurret_"-- of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:-- "One lesson, reader, let us two divide, Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure and our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice--so let us conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart--nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two words--Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate--that would have been cutting his own throat--but to thin man-devouring wild beasts--the Pards--with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries--nor a wild boar--the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat--and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover, "When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills." What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming nostrils--betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey--of all shades and hues--and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar character of shape and form--yet all blending harmoniously as they crown the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy sky.