they feel at the strong scent left behind by him they had so unceremoniously disturbed from his comfortable lodgings. But the scent is too good for us to dwell long for description, and away they go at a killing pace, which, if it lasts long enough, will see to the bottom of many a gallant steed there present. And now comes the rush of horsemen amidst the cries of 'Hold hard! don't spoil your sport!' of the master, and the 'old 'ard!' of the huntsman, who has an eye to tips, and therefore restrains his wrath in some measure. But the Easyallshireans' are not to be kept back by any such remonstrances and expostulations as these, and those who mean to be with the hounds throughout the run, hustle along to get a forward place; whilst the knowing and cunning ones, with the master at their head, turn short round, and make for a line of gates which lie invitingly open, right in the direction which the fox has taken.

I set a good start, and being well mounted, sailed away, and am soon alongside of Joe the huntsman, whose horse, though a screw, and not very high in condition, is obliged to go, being compelled thereto by its rider. A stiff-looking fence which I charge at the same moment as Joe, who takes away at least a perch of fencing, and thus lets many a muff through, lands us into the next field, and affords a fair view of the hounds streaming away a little distance before us. But why should I describe the run? 'Bell's Life,' weekly, gives much more graphic descriptions of such things than I am able to write; let me, therefore, confine my narrative to what befel my individual self.

A rattling burst of twenty minutes rendered the field, as may be well imagined, very select, and it would in all probability have become still more so, had not a fortunate check given horses and men a few moments' breathing time, thus enabling the cunning riders to get up to the hounds. Away we go again, and I will be there at the finish,' I exclaimed, as pressing my cap firmly on my head, and shutting my eyes, I ride at a tremendous bullfinch,

Another ten minutes' best pace and the fox is evidently sinking before us; but, alas! it was not to be my lot to see the gallant animal run into and pulled down in the open, after as fine a run as was over seen. Trim-kept hedges, well-hung, stout, and newly-painted white gates, had shown me that for the last few moments he had entered the domain of some proprietor, whose estate certainly presented the very pink of neatness: little indeed did I dream that there would exist in the very heart of Easyallshire' any one so benighted as to object to the inroads made upon him by that renowned pack the 'Muggers.' But I reckoned without my host, or rather, as the sequel will show, with my host; for as in my endeavours to save my now somewhat exhausted horse, I rode at what appeared an easy place in a very high fence, bounded on the off-side with a stiff post and rail, an irate elderly gentleman, gesticulating, shouting, and waving an umbrella in his hand, suddenly rose up as it were from the very bowels of the earth, just as my steed was preparing to make his spring, thus causing the spirited animal to rear up, and, overbalancing himself, to fall heavily to the ground with me under him. When I next recovered consciousness and opened my eyes, I was being borne along on a hurdle, by the author of my misfortunesa grey-haired, piebald whiskered, stout, little, red-faced old gentleman, and two of his satellites, who I rightly conjectured to be the coachman and gardener; but the pain of my broken leg made me again relapse into unconsciousness, nor did the few wits I by nature possess, return to me again until I was laid upon a bed, and a medical practitioner of the neighbourhood was busy at work setting my fractured limb. To make a long story short, I remained under the roof of

Major Pipeclay-for that was the name of the irascible little gentleman, whose hatred of hunting, hounds, and horses, had caused my suffering-until my wounded limb was well again, the worthy old major doing all in his power to make amends for the catastrophe his absurd violence had brought about.

At the expiration of six weeks I was able to move about on crutches; at the termination of twice that period, I was well again, and had moreover, fallen irretrievably in love with the bright eyes and pretty face of Belinda Pipeclay, one of the major's handsome daughters. Thinking, in my ignorance of the fair sex, that the child of so irascible a papa -having been in her juvenile days well tutored under the Solomonian code of sparing the rod, and spoiling the child'-must, therefore, of

necessity, make a submissive and obedient wife, I proposed-was accepted, obtained the major's consent, and became a Benedict.

Dear reader, I am really ashamed to confess the truth, 'I have been severely henpecked ever since.' Whether Belinda possesses the same antipathy to hounds, horses, and hunting men, as her progenitor, I cannot possibly tell, for returning to India soon after my marriage, I had no opportunity of there testing her feelings in that respect. Now the increasing number of mouths in our nursery compels a decreasing ratio of animals in my stable, and I am reduced to one old, brokenwinded cripple, which I call the Machiner.' He takes Mrs. Sabretache and myself to the market town on a Saturday, and mamma, papa, and the little Sabretaches to church on the following day.

10 Mr. Kenny Meadows, Mr. Toro Thomas, Birket

Foster, Mr. Samuel Read, et hoc genus omne, greeting! Be good enough, gentlemen, to accept my scorn! Be good enough to understand that I denounce you as the Perkin Warbecks, the Lambert Simnels, the Cock Lane Ghosts, and Johanna Southcotes of art! You are impostors, gentlemen! Not in your work; no! I know that well enough. Never did more cunning pencils work away on box-wood blocks; never did more poetical minds blend with more expert fingers: but all this increases your shame, gentlemen! You draw so admirably that we give in to your imposition, and suffer ourselves to be led captive by it. About Christmas, for instance: why do you still portray that genial, ruddy, icebound, holly-crowned giant? why do you still fill our periodicals with pictures of snow-covered landscapes, snow-clad churches, ice-bound lakes, golf-parties, sleighing-parties, frozen

out distressed damsels dying on snow-covered doorsteps, robins picking very black crumbs off very white lawns, carol-singing villagers blowing their nails and beating their breasts for the superinducement of caloric? How long is it since you saw any of these sights at Christmastime? how long is it since you saw snow at all, or since there was any good skating in London? I remember frosty winters when I was a boy, and I mind me of a certain time when London was 'snowed up'— when all the cabs that were out had two horses, and the omnibuses did not run, and there was a strange silence in all the streets, as in a city of the dead. Sometimes when I talk to people about things being different from what they were some years ago, I am told, Ah! the change is in you. You feel differently about such matters. You're getting on, you know;' and then I am impressed with the information that time flies, and that we are none of us younger, and that

each year makes a difference, and various other novel and interesting remarks of the same nature. But, humbly subscribing to all this, Í still maintain that the present style of representing Christmas is is a mockery, a delusion, and a snare, and calculated to bring us into contempt in the eyes of our children, who will regard us as a set of mummers playing at an exploded rite, and will feel for us the same sort of pity that we feel for dear old George Cruikshank, when we see him leaving his own quips and drolleries, in which he has never been excelled, to attempt the portrayal of a modern swell-in the high-collared, long-tailed coat, ribbed silk stockings, and pumps of thirty years ago.

When I rose this Christmas morning I saw no vestige of ice or snow. The grass was brilliantly green, the buds were shooting on many shrubs, the air was balmy, and the entire aspect of nature was April-like and genial. The conventionalities were in full play. Yes; I will allow that people wished each other 'a merry Christmas; the gardener, as he touched his hat, told me he had sent in a good store of Christmas logs for firing; and there was the usual excitement among the young folk as to pudding and mincemeat. We found the church duly decorated with holly and laurel, bits of yew uncomfortably mingling with the other evergreens, and reminding one of Mr. Tennyson's tree, which

-Graspest at the stones,

That name the underlying dead, Thy fibres net to dreamless head Thy roots are wrapped around the bones ;' and the sockets of the parson's candlesticks flaring with curling green. Regular Christmas sermon from the parson-an old one, I think, as I detect in it very frosty bits about 'hardened glebe' and 'ice-bound rill,' and general recollection of the illustrated journals not at all appropriate to the existing temperature. Pew-opener conventional, too, with a Christmas shiver and a Christmas cough before the receipt of the annual gratuity, and the Christmas grin and wishes of 'a many, many 'appy 'ears' after the pocketing

thereof. We give up conventionality when we get outside the porch, and walk slowly home; and after lunch we throw open the French windows of the dining-room, and bask in the genial sun which pours in through them. Far away, over the hushed fields, and across the bar made by the quiet little railway line, lie the outposts of the sleeping giant, London, a long line of terrace, very seasidy in its aspect, tall, and gaunt, and stuccoey-very suggestive of lodgings at from two to four guineas a week according to the floor, and obviously looking on to the parade where the old gentlemen walk up and down, and cough, and the young people flirt and smoke in front. No London for us, though, to-day; tho dog-cart is at the door, but Brown George's head shall not be turned towards the streets; further a-field, eh, Brown George? and, responsive to my touch on the reins, the brave horse starts off down the lane, and striking through the heart of the groves of the Evangelist, turns into the broad road skirting the Regent's Park.

Two friends are with me in this little trip-two friends like myself affiliated to literature, and earning their bread by the plying of their pens. Consequently, it is not astonishing that the subject of our conversation should be (has been ever since we came together) the great loss which our profession has suffered in the death of one of its chieftains. Two nights since one of those driving with me dined with WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY— listening to his jests, in which there was ever a ringing echo of sadness, and talked with him of his prospects and forthcoming work. And, as we pass the entrance to the Zoological Gardens, I mind me that it was there I last had seen him; and Brown George's reins hang loosely in my hand as I call to mind the tall square figure, the high shoulders, the hands now plunged deeply into the trousers pockets, now clasped together behind his back, the intelligent face, with an expression of sensitiveness amounting almost to querulousness which never left it, the quaint philosophy and satire,

so humanized as to be stripped of all its barb, that proceeded from between his lips. Gone, gone for ever! To us, humble hero-worshippers, privates in the ranks which had just lost one of their commanding officers, acolytes in the ceremonies of which one of the high-priests had been called away, there was a certain incongruity in the acknowledged jollity and happiness of the day. Thackeray was dead-Thackeray the great author-a soul such as seldom inhabits mortal clay had been suddenly recalled, and yet there were people grinning, and talking, and pushing, wheeling perambulators, sucking oranges, coming hazily out of gin-shops, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands. They cared nothing for the dead man; they had never heard of him probably. And then one of us recollected a story which Thackeray himself had told him: how, when he was canvassing for his election at Oxford, he called upon one of the Heads of Colleges, and sent in his name. The dignitary saw him, and asked his profession. An author.' "What had he written? Something flabbergasted, he replied, "Vanity Fair." "I never met with it,' said the dean; but conclude it is something in the manner of Bunyan!' Vanitas vanitatum! and Jones, who has had an article on Boots in the Megatherium,' and Brown, who has published a comic shilling book called, Mrs. Tippikin's Tea and Turn Out,' imagine that they are celebrities of the day, and that their every action is closely scanned by an admiring public!

6

So, take Brown George in hand again, and away through the Regent's Park. The people-what the noble Tory writers queruously call the plebs are out here in force, lolling, idling, romping, as though it were full summer. Fashion don't seem to alter much in the mechanic's Sunday dress; so long as I can recollect it has been long-tailed coat, black satin waistcoat, black trousers, very crumply at the knees, and hard shiny black hat; so it is now, exact in every particular. Why do they don this frightful garb? Is it with the notion that their appearance

then approximates to that of a gentleman? because they are utterly wrong. Is it that they think the costume pretty? because they are frightfully mistaken. Why do men want to be mistaken for what they are not? I know that if any one were to say to me, 'Eusebius, my boy, I'll make you up to look like a marquis, an earl, a baronet, or a Lombard Street banker,' I should decline the honour; and why on earth does Chips the carpenter-an honest man and a very good-looking one in his working clothes-try to disguise himself in an utterly unmistakable hideous sham? The sward is dotted with red and blue children, appallingly bright; and the seats are sprinkled with the military, now squat and sheepish, now tall, whiskered, and impassioned, and with young persons in service, who are supposed to be at church, and whose conversation scems to be limited to the repetition of the sentence, 'Get along with yer.' Vagrant boys, too, we see about, of course, fiends who mock at us as we pass, and who yell after us, 'Three gents out for a hairin',' as Brown George turns through Gloucester Gate and enters Camden Town.

Do you know Camden Town? A sweet spot: the home, par excellence, of the commercial clerk of from 30s. a week to two-fifty a year-an estimable, responsible, hard-working man. I have a word or two-not about him, but about the houses. Houses all built to meet the requirements of the clerkly world; they even look as if they had been manufactured of dingy blotting-paper, and are so fragile that they could be taken out with an eraser. Thoroughly respectable though: none of your low lodgings, or anything of that sort! House! nice parlour, wire blind in window; very shiny, sticky, gummy furniture, chairs with American cloth seats, which stick to your trousers; vase with everlasting flowers, and two china dogs on mantelpiece; very bad, cheap print of three chorister boys (oh, the difference between the sweet youths and the real dirty-nosed choirboy of a country church!) on the wall; little mat by the door. Nice