WHAT WE SAW IN THE GREAT WINTER EXHIBITION

1851-52.

BY SCRIBBLE.

"Every dog has his day;" but sometimes the days are so bad that they are scarcely worth having. Do not imagine that this proverbial expression has anything to do with hounds-not at all-he must be a bold writer, and wonderfully full of his subject, who plunges "in medias res at once. If there ever was a month in which I could afford to do so, it is the present; but I shall not for various reasons: first, because it is pleasanter to me not to do so-my pen goes gently on for the present, without note or memorandum to impede its progress; secondly, because in conducting you through the winter exhibition, there are plenty of things to be looked at both instructive and amusing to my dear public; a kind and patronizing friend of mine, somewhat inconsiderate occasionally, and whimsical, but very essential to my success, so not to be deprived of his amusement or instruction.

Now I must say, that when I went up to London last summer to see that most wonderful display of mental ingenuity, the Crystal Palace, and all that it contained, notwithstanding my provincial appearance and chawbaconism, I received every possible attention from my friends of cockneydom. I'm a man of a generous mind, and I intend to repay them by giving them a turn in our exhibition. We have now changed places. I am no longer the rustic ignoramus, the thick-booted, fustianbreeched, beaver-hatted, red-fisted, country cousin; but I am become in my exhibition, the primrose-gloved, thin-soled, stultz-built, Lincoln and Bennetted swell, who knows everything and everybody; and can make myself here just as agreeable and useful a companion or cicerone to you, my old Bond Street, as you formerly did to me. So you see every dog," and that's only a grown up puppy, "has its day," is quite true in this case.

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Well! what did you do for me? Did you smuggle me from the door at the Kensington Garden end of the palace, right through to the Knightsbridge barrack gate, as if you were not only ashamed of your companion, but of the whole business? Did you say, as I pulled this way and that, "Oh! never mind Russia, confound Prussia, the statuary be hanged, who cares about Reineke, or the Greek slavecome along, let's get into the middle of it, take a general view, and then we'll get out again?" When I asked you who that very distinguished looking man, with the hooked nose, quick eye, pale cheeks, and closely-buttoned surtout was, or that fat millionaire, with the railway scrip tumbling out of his pockets for want of room (railway scrip does'nt always amalgamate with sovereigns), or the lady with the hat and feathers and black velvet habit, you did'nt turn the cold shoulder on your countryfied friend and say, Oh! its only old Quatre Bras, blow old Hussle'em and his scrip, who cares about Madame de la

Salamanca and her hat and feathers," but you took compassion on my ignorance, and courteously pointed out the distinguished characters and things of the summer exhibition. "Quatre Bras, my boy," said you, is the greatest man of his age-stop and have a look at him; he is the greatest general, and not far from being a very great politician; when he dies all England will mourn for many days. Hussle'em, I'm glad you took notice of him, he is frequently here, a very shrewd, clever, fellow, as you may suppose, for he managed to do all the other shrewd, clever, fellows in the world, so that in his way he's not very unlike old Quatre Bras; and then you added your little anecdotes, not so very scandalous, about Madame de la Salamanca; and in fact you lionized me without any sort of ill-temper; only you must have thought me most unmercifully stupid; and though I wear very thick highlows, and bad hats, and loose coats, and keep pigs and chickens, and bud my own roses, I declare, my dear public, upon that occasion you treated me like a gentleman, and I shall do the same by you now that I've got your arm for a walk, no a ride, in the winter.

I shall tell you to start with, that you are to the full as ignorant here, and as stupid generally, about my country life and sports as I am about yours, you horrid town mouse. If a country mouse gets hold of this paper he can read it or not, as he pleases; perhaps he is quite as wise as myself on the matter, perhaps not; for there are a great many of my country friends who frequent our exhibition daily, but who know little or nothing about the sciences and beauties it comprizes, just as you town-bred gentlemen have lived in London all your lives, and are as ignorant of its curiosities as if you had been born and bred in Constantinople. So, my good provincials (for I know a great many of you take our excellent mag.) do not be too proud to lean; take your eyes from your breeches and boots, or from your horse's head or his tail, for a time, and look at those hounds and that huntsman, and that country; see the hounds work, and the huntsman make his cast, and the fox his point, or learn where he turns and why; with a thousand other things of which you professors are ignorant, only because the hunting field does not" smack of observation."

You have finished your toilette, a rather extravagant affair, but very well for a cockney; and your breakfast, to which you have added what you call a "chasse café," but what I, in my ignorance, call a glass of brandy; and there stands your horse at the door, a quiet, steady, hunter, just suited to a muff like myself, on which you may be able to see the run, and certainly many things which I want to point out to you at the cover side. Now then, come along, and do not turn the palm of your unoccupied hand out behind your hips, like the fin of a seal in swimming, or square your elbows as if they were trying to part company with your arms; but sit quietly down upon your horse and enjoy this lovely morning. There has been a slight frost during the early hours; the grass is still white, though a bright sun is up; before we get to the meet the frozen puddles will again have become water; and as we ride along at every step the hoar frost drops from the boughs of the thorn like dissolving crystal; and here we are. Of course when you go back to London, or to some provincial county town, you'll tell your friends you went out "to have a look at the hounds." Nothing is so common as this expression, "to look at the hounds." Everybody

is going to have "a look at the hounds ;" and yet I venture to say that not one man out of thirty in any hunt ever dreams of doing so. They look at the horses, and the ladies, and themselves, and "veniunt spectantur ut ipsi ;" but the last thing that enters their head is the form, the grace, the magnificent beauty of a foxhound. Their fun is to be as late as possible at the meet, to gallop up at the last moment on a weedy hack, and then, instead of making up for lost time, by jogging along by the side of the pack to the covert, their cigars must be lighted, their friends saluted, the new arrivals criticized, and the last good run with the Pytchley, the Cottesmore, the Quorn, or Lord Southampton related, with incredible yarns of their own prowess, and unheeded criticism on the performances of the huntsman. You and I are too old for all this, we'll get on arm in arm in good time, so that we may have an opportunity of looking at the hounds now, as well as some of the horsemen, whom we may not happen to see again if we get a run.

"Now here we are at the exhibition, what would you like to see first ?"

"Who is that tall thin man on a black horse, with a snaffle bridle? What a magnificent beast-not the man of course."

if

"A very good shot of yours, stick as close to him as you can; and you have a run you'll see it-that's Mr. K——y.'

"Oh! and look here, here's a grey; and do tell me who this is in a dark green frock coat, a cap, and jack boots-Colonel Somebody I heard him addressed as-that's a famous short-legged, oldfashioned sort, the bay horse he's riding; and this tall, goodlooking, man, with moustaches; and here comes a carriage-by Jove, what a pretty woman."

"Oh! this will never do, my dear fellow, hold hard, hold hard, pray you are overrunning the scent now with a vengeance; you're worse a thousand times than I was at the Crystal Palace; I did'nt make half the noise about Russia or Prussia, or Quatre Bras, or Madame de la Salamanca; but you shall be satisfied in time, only let's go a little more regularly about the business. There, look at those hounds, the Pytchley hounds: they have one of the finest countries and the best reputations in England, and from their last month's performance they really deserve it. What magnificent hounds they are; a century and a half ago there was nothing like them; there was a stag hound, and there was a beagle, but there was nothing like the animal you see walking about in front of Cottisbrooke. There's no competition from foreign countries in this sport; this is an exhibition all our own; the most unmitigated protectionist might enjoy it; the horses and hounds of merry England are as their maids and matrons, beyond all rivalry or praise. And look at that light-weight in the middle of his pack, as he touches his cap to the habitués of the country. That is Charles Payne, one of the most civil, well-mannered, servants that ever crossed a saddle, and one of the finest riders in England. How fond he is of these hounds look how he bends to caress them, and see how he rides to them. And there's the master-not an enviable position you say; that's a matter of opinion; look at his horse too, St. Patrick; I hope you like shoulders in a hunter. Look too at the whole turn out, the establishment, the neatness of the servants, the condition of the hounds

and borses; listen in a run to the cheery tones of Payne as he caps on a stooping hound, or slips away for a cast from a too eager field, and then go and tell the slow old gentleman who talks to you of the provinces that a bad run in such a country is worth a good one in many another.

And here let me digress for a moment, the slow old gentleman reminds me of it; and it's the same everywhere and in everything; if you don't do business in the same way that I do, I've great difficulty in imagining that you do it at all. What old don, or highlowed professor, ever gave credit to the man of lemon-coloured kids for critical acumen in the Greek authors? Where's the rural dean that thinks a man in a black neckcloth can have any pretensions to performing his duties as a parish priest? Where's the red-faced, cord-breeched, low-crowned, slockdolager, with a second day's white choker, that ever calls a man a sportsman who lives in a fast grass country, and rides over a double when it gets in his way without pulling his horse into a walk; they're all steeplechasers, says he, who don't go pottering along as if the fences were not meant to be jumped, and fox hounds were beagles; but it's not necessary to believe all this; these fast countries produce the finest sportsmen in England; and it's not necessary to be as slow as a top in order to be as cunning as a fox, though one's pluck might certainly sometimes be tempered with discretion.

The shop-window advertisement of the thing is admirable here, there's no denying; and if the character of the article always equalled its externals the world would not rob one another in the way it does. Walk down Oxford Street, or anywhere else in a crowded thoroughfare, and just observe the system: cheap boots, hats, coats, whips, mosaic gold chains, and "ici on parle Francais "-the fact being that the boots, hats, coats, chains, are as dear as bad things must be, and the language caled "Francais" is a mixture of English idiom and Swiss vocabulary. Not so here, sir; every article is genuine, from the deep ribb'd, straight-legg'd, light-headed, round-footed, foxhound, and the sleek-coated hunter, to the spurs of the whippers-in; as you will see, the sport included. The only imposters here are some of the spectators, who, however, take in themselves more than they do anybody else-it's a harmless diversion.

But perhaps before I introduce you to the inside of the shop you would like to go on a little further, and take a general survey. There's Lord Southampton, not a light weight, but have you ever seen a horse more fit to carry a heavy man; a thorough sportsman, and not to be baulked of his fox for the value of horse-flesh. I should think since his lordship lived in Leicestershire, in the days of Fugleman and Trumpeter, few men have had finer studs. There's Morgan, too, with the hounds and his whips-what admirable servants' horses! There's no extraordinary dash or fashion about our friend Morgan; but a steady, quiet, determined manner, which says, only give me a fair chance and I'll kill him, or account for him. His riding is of the same style; no bustle, no noise, but all quiet determination to go, and he does go. He has certainly fewer difficulties with his field to contend with than Charles Payne, but he has more in his country, as you will see. I do not mean that it's bad; but it is certainly not so good as the rest of Northamptonshire. You will have the advantage of seeing some excellent sports

men, who can ride to hounds, or after them, uniting much sound judg ment with plenty of nerve. And give five minutes to the hounds-the bitches they are we are looking at-not so large as the Pytchley, but what beauties; perhaps from twenty to twenty-one inches, and very even, heads leanish, not short and snubnosed like a pointer, nor throats too small, but muscular for the size of the head, quick as well as fast (very different qualities), thighs and loins well filled, ribs and flanks a little spare; these, like some of their followers, can go a burst, or kill an afternoon fox in a long day.

If you've any taste for a hound, or a horse, or a pair of breeches and boots; if, in fact, you're not a villainous old woman, I rather think I've taken you a stroll that will take the shine out of Paxtonia itself. I spent a long time amongst the cockneys last summer, and I saw many wonderful and many beautiful specimens of man's ingenuity; but I saw nothing that made my heart beat, or my pulse throb, like the bright red fur and the white tip of a freshly goneaway fox, and the thundering chorus and fiend-like dask of his pursuers. Neither did you, and you

know it.

"Yes! you're energetic, and rather partial to fun, all you Scribbles are-you're of a warm temperament, easily excited, I'm not. I should like to hear the results, the consequences of all this. What you call the sport, or rather not you, but the old slockdolagers, the slow coaches of hunting, as you call them. Your sport, I take it, ends when business begins. You fellows down here are too fast to last long. Do you think I'd trust my speculations in the city to a west-end fashionable to transact? No; no more than I'll trust your appearances, good as they are, for a run."

Oh! there you are, old Sceptic, you're one of those who think we don't hunt, because we can go. Very well, you shall hear what we have done, and if you're not too slow you shall see. There's been so much good hunting the last month, that it has made a sportsman of Binks himself. He's ridden much better, with more discretion I may say, since the Leamington gent, as he calls him, knocked him out of the bullfinch; it might have been worse, as he justly observes.

"There you go again, Scribble, with your Binks and your bullfinches, and your Leamington gents; why don't you let them alone, I dare say they ride quite as well as you do. Don't shirk the question, but let us have the sport, or at least a specimen of it."

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I've no cause, you old unbeliever, to shirk the question this month; but I've neither time nor inclination to give it to you from beginning to end, so take what you can get and be thankful. We begin where we left off." "January 12th, 1852-Lord Southampton at Stowe Wood, found at Grubbs Coppice, up to Gayton, by Ascot Thorns, round to Bugbrook Down."

"Gently, gently, Scribble; don't be so confoundedly stupid and prosy; but

"Prosy indeed, that's because it was a run and nothing else. Well, then, it rained like bricks the whole of the day; the scent, after being very bad the week before, improved at once with the wet; and after a very fine run of fifty-five minutes near the brook there occurred a very mysterious disappearance of the wily animal. This happened while several gentlemen were enjoying themselves in the water. One dis