Here my eyes were greeted with the glory of my first "meet," and a glory it was indeed! Pictures and descriptions had suggested it, but they had only suggested it. This was the reality, and it far exceeded my anticipation. The grounds were fairly alive with a brilliant company of men and women,--happy and hearty, and just gathered for the day's sport. Red coats, white breeches, and top-boots were plenty, and the neat holiday air of the whole company was refreshing and delightful. Scattered about singly and in groups, mounted, on foot, and in carriages, were a couple of hundred people of all ages and of all conditions. Chatting from the saddle and over carriage-doors, lounging up and down the Drive, or looking over the hounds, the company were leisurely awaiting the opening of the ball. They had come from a circuit of twenty miles around, and they appeared to be mainly people who habitually congregate at the cover-side throughout the hunting-season, and to be generally more or less acquainted with each other. The element of coquetry was not absent; but coquetry is apparently not a natural product of the English soil, and that sort of intercourse was not conspicuous. The same number of handsome young men and women would be more demonstrative at a similar gathering in America. A similar gathering, however, would not be possible in America. We have no occasion on which people of all sorts come so freely and so naturally together, interested in a traditional and national sport, which is alike open to rich and poor, and meeting, not for the single occasion only, but several times a week, winter after winter, often for many years. Noblemen, gentlemen, farmers, manufacturers, professional men, snobs, cads, errand-boys,--everybody, in short, who cared to come seemed to have the right to come, and, so far as the hunt was concerned, seemed to be on an equal footing. Of course the poorer element was comparatively small, and mainly from the immediate neighborhood. The _habitués_ of a hunt are seldom below the grade of well-to-do farmers. Servants from the house were distributing refreshments, riders were mounting their hunters, grooms were adjusting saddle-girths, too fiery animals were being quieted, and there was generally an air of preparation about the whole assemblage. A little at one side, kept well together by the huntsman and a couple of whippers-in, were the hounds (the Atherstone pack), about forty of them, or, technically, "twenty couples," strong-limbed, large-eared, party-colored, wholesome-looking fellows. They attracted much attention and elicited frequent commendation, for they were said to be the very finest pack in England,--as was also each of the three other packs that I saw. To the unskilled eye, and simply viewed as dogs, they were not remarkable; but it was a case in which the judgment of an unskilled person could have no value.