“Breakfast in England is a confidential and unceremonious hour, and servants are generally dispensed with. This is to me, I confess, an advantage it has over every other meal. I detest eating with twenty tall fellows standing opposite, whose business it is to watch me. The coffee and tea were on the table, with toast, muffins, oat-cakes, marmalade, jellies, fish, and all the paraphernalia of a Scotch breakfast; and on the sideboard stood cold meats for those who liked them, and they were expected to go to it and help themselves. Nothing could be more easy, unceremonious, and affable, than the whole tone of the meal. One after another rose and fell into groups in the windows, or walked up and down the long room, and, with one or two others, I joined the duke at the head of the table, who gave us some interesting particulars of the salmon-fisheries of the Spey. The privilege of fishing the river within his lands is bought of him at the pretty sum of eight thousand pounds a-year. “The ladies went off unaccompanied to their walks in the park and other avocations; those bound for the covers, joined the gamekeepers, who were waiting with their dogs in the leash at the stables; and some paired off to the billiard-room. Still suffering from lameness, I declined all invitations to the shooting parties, who started across the park, with the dogs leaping about them in a frenzy of delight, and accepted the duke’s kind offer of a pony phaeton to drive down to the kennels. The duke’s breed, both of setters and hounds, is celebrated throughout the kingdom. They occupy a spacious building in the centre of a wood, a quadrangle enclosing a court, and large enough for a respectable farm-house. The chief huntsman and his family, and perhaps a gamekeeper or two, lodge on the premises, and the dogs are divided by palings across the court. I was rather startled to be introduced into the same enclosure with a dozen gigantic bloodhounds, as high as my breast, the keeper’s whip in my hand, the only defence. I was not easier for the man’s assertion, that, without it, they would ‘have the life out of me in a crack.’ They came around me very quietly, and one immense fellow, with a chest like a horse, and a head of the finest expression, stood up and laid his paws on my shoulders, with the deliberation of a friend about to favour me with some grave advice. One can scarce believe that these noble creatures have not reason like ourselves. Those slender, thoroughbred heads, large speaking eyes, and beautiful limbs and graceful action, should be gifted with more than mere animal instinct. The greyhounds were the beauties of the kennel, however; I never had seen such perfect creatures. The setters were in the next division, and really they were quite lovely. The rare tan and black dog of this race, with his silky floss hair, intelligent muzzle, good-humoured face, and caressing fondness, quite excited my admiration. There were thirty or