Among these pictures were some fine Wouvermans, and other hunting and hawking pieces, and one in particular of the duchess and her ladies, from Don Quixote. Beauclerc, who had gone round examining and admiring, stood fixed when he came to this picture, in which he fancied he discovered in one of the figures some likeness to Helen; the lady had a hawk upon her wrist. Churchill came up eagerly to the examination, with glass at eye. He could not discern the slightest resemblance to Miss Stanley; but he was in haste to bring out an excellent observation of his own, which he had made his own from a Quarterly Review, illustrating the advantage it would be to painters to possess knowledge, even of kinds seemingly most distant from the line of their profession. “For instance, now _à priori_, one should not insist upon a great painter’s being a good ornithologist, and yet, for want of being something of a bird-fancier, look here what he has done--quite absurd, a sort of hawk introduced, such as never was or could be at any hawking affair in nature: would not sit upon lady’s wrist or answer to her call--would never fly at a bird. Now you see this is a ridiculous blunder.” While Churchill plumed himself on this critical remark Captain Warmsley told of who still kept hawks in England, and of the hawking parties he had seen and heard of--“even this year, that famous hawking in Wiltshire, and that other in Norfolk.” Churchill asked Warmsley if he had been at Lord Berner’s when Landseer was there studying the subject of his famous hawking scene. “Have you seen it, Lady Cecilia?” continued he; “it is beautiful; the birds seem to be absolutely coming out of the picture;” and he was going on with some of his connoisseurship, and telling of his mortification in having missed the purchase of that picture; but Warmsley got back to the hawking he had seen, and he became absolutely eloquent in describing the sport. Churchill, though eager to speak, listened with tolerably polite patience till Warmsley came to what he had forgot to mention,--to the label with the date of place and year that is put upon the heron’s leg; to the heron brought from Denmark, where it had been caught, with the label of having been let fly from Lord Berner’s; “for,” continued he, “the heron is always to be saved if possible, so, when it is down, and the hawk over it, the falconer has some raw beef ready minced, and lays it on the heron’s back, or a pigeon, just killed, is sometimes used; the hawk devours it, and the heron, quite safe, as soon as it recovers from its fright, mounts slowly upward and returns to its heronry.” Helen listened eagerly, and so did Lady Cecilia, who said, “You know, Helen, our favourite Washington Irving quotes that in days of yore, ‘a lady of rank did not think herself completely equipped in riding forth, unless she had her tassel-gentel held by jesses on her delicate hand.’”