The party assembled on a rising ground; a flag was displayed to give notice of the intended sport; the falconers appeared, picturesque figures in their green jackets and their long gloves, and their caps plumed with herons’ feathers--some with the birds on their wrists--one with the frame over his shoulder upon which to set the hawk. _Set_, did we say?--no: “_cast_ your hawk on the perch” is, Beauclerc observed, the correct term; for, as Horace sarcastically remarked, Mr. Beauclerc might be detected as a novice in the art by his over-exactness; his too correct, too attic, pronunciation of the hawking language. But Granville readily and gaily bore all this ridicule and raillery, sure that it would neither stick nor stain, enjoying with all his heart the amusement of the scene--the assembled ladies, the attendant cavaliers; the hood-winked hawks, the ringing of their brass bells; the falconers anxiously watching the clouds for the first appearance of the bird; their skill in loosening the hoods, as, having but one hand at liberty, they used their teeth to untie the string:----And now the hoods are off, and the hawks let fly. They were to fly many castes of hawks this day; the first flight was after a curlew; and the riding was so hard, so dangerous, from the broken nature of the ground, that the ladies gave it up, and were contented to view the sport from the eminence where they remained. And now there was a question to be decided among the sportsmen as to the comparative rate of riding at a fox chase, and in “the short, but terrifically hard gallop, with the eyes raised to the clouds, which is necessary for the full enjoyment of hawking;” and then the gentlemen, returning, gathered round the ladies, and the settling the point, watches in hand, and bets depending, added to the interest of flight the first, and Churchill, master of the revels, was in the highest spirits. But presently the sky was overcast, the morning lowered, the wind rose, and changed was Churchill’s brow; there is no such thing as hawking against the wind--that capricious wind! “Curse the wind!” cried Churchill; “and confusion seize the fellow who says there is to be no more hawking to-day!” The chief falconer, however, was a phlegmatic German, and proper-behaved, as good falconers should be, who, as “Old Tristram’s booke” has it, even if a bird should be lost, he should never swear, and only say, “_Dieu soit loué_,” and “remember that the mother of hawks is not dead.”