THE HARRIER KENNEL.

HOUNDS, THE PROPERTY OF THE LATE J. P. ALLIX, ESQ.

ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY HARRY HALL.

Whether a man may like it or not, there is necessarily a certain degree of the pomps and vanities attendant on the position of a Master of Foxhounds. As with the worthy citizen who was told he must go to church now because he was Lord Mayor, so must the gallant sportsman bend to a good many other duties because he is a Master of foxhounds. They make him steward of the races because he is Master of the Foxhounds; they honour him equally at the Assembly Rooms because he is the Master of the Foxhounds; if, at the coming election, the opposition want a good man to represent their interests, and run up the expenses, ten to one but their first deputation is to the Master of the Foxhounds; if the farmers want a champion to make a manifestation for them, of course they go to their old friend the Master of the Foxhounds; the young ones preparing for a lark, or the men of business for an effect, are equally anxious for his presence, while luckily he can serve but once, or we don't know how often they would be clapping our M.F.H. into his court suit, and bringing him before my learned judge as Sheriff for the county.

Out of it, too, at home or abroad, the proud distinction still sticks to him. At the Hall the old and the young ladies make all their arrangements according to the movements of the foxhounds; even John Butler owns to their influence, while the reverend vicar himself acquires a second sort of dignity from his connection with the foxhounds. Take him abroad and the squire is still the marked man: he is pointed out to you on the stand at Ascot as a Master of Foxhounds; the cut of his coat, or his hack's tail, is criticised in Rotten Row, as to how it agrees with his character as a Master of Foxhounds. His son at Oxford is a leading man at once, because his father is a Master of Foxhounds. In short, the foxhounds are the grand idea of our friend's life; and though he may he sheriff for the whole county, or member for the best division of it, or steward of the meeting in the morning, or master of the ceremonies in the evening, every one still feels that all these things are but secondary to his claim and rank as a Master of Foxhounds.

Now, with the harriers, there is, or at least there ought to be, nothing of this. Instead of the one object, the summum bonum of a man's season, they should be kept like billiard balls or bad race horses, just to rattle about whenever you feel inclined for them. In any case, however much the true or old sportsman may be willing himself to make of the clever little pack, it is pretty certain the rest of the world will not be very ready to pay them the same respect. His own boy, with his college chum, will come down to breakfast in scarlet, and be off in the dog-cart fifteen miles to meet the foxhounds, though they know well enough "the governor" will draw for his first hare the same morning within half a league of the hall door. Dr. Slop, should he meet them on his way from his last finger-post, will join in for half an hour's gallop, or Farmer Stubble make farming and hare-hunting one

and the same thing, should they cross his meadows; but neither the doctor nor the grazier would think of setting about it in the same business-like sort of way they would had they made up their minds to join the young squire in his journey to Whitfield Fir Clumps. Sooner or later the good master himself will feel and admit this, and hunt his harriers as he breeds his pheasants, farms his home lands, barrels his home-brewed, commits his poachers, or does anything else in the round of a country gentleman's occupations-without considering it extraordinary himself, or expecting his neighbours to do so either. Nay! save and except that you came down special to get a mount and write a tour, we don't know but that you might pass a night or two in the house without ever fancying there was such a thing as a hound about the place. At length, perhaps, after admiring the missis's flowers and the gardener's grapes, "approving" old Fidget, the favourite mare, with the Ratcatcher colt at her foot, and then turning from the Stud Book to the Herd Book, to count over the short-horns in the same field-Then, perhaps, for the first time your host may take another cast, and invite you to a look into "the harrier kennel."

There is no fuss or flourish about it like there would be if you had to walk up and see the lions who dust poor foxy's jacket for him, but in you go at once. Old John, the kennel huntsman, feeder, whip, &c., &c., making " make-believe," as usual with a curb-chain that, like Lady Macbeth's hand, seems to have a "d- -d spot" which will never rub off-Old John, we say, meets you at the door, and the next minute GIRKIN has taken all the polish off your right boot in his rush with SPORTSMAN and WATCHMAN to say how-d'ye-do to the squire. GAYLASS and MERRY-LASS again greet you in a style well worthy of their sponsors, while MUSIC gives fair promise of how she could own to her title too, had she but the chance of a challenge. And that's not an impossibility either; we might find an Old Jack on the grass grounds even yet-eh John? John cannot but admit so reasonable a supposition, and so the brown mare and King Dick are ordered to be saddled instanter a message at the same time being sent to Miss Emmy to know if she will come and whip in on her pony.

Few men, we believe, could be more averse to the ostentation of sport than the late Mr. Allix, the owner of the pack from which we have been favoured with a draft, and which we give as in every way worthy to embellish a sporting magazine. Though so little liable to be caught by the mere flash or show of the thing, Mr. Allix was-the more readily admitted, perhaps from that very cause-a most keen and excellent sportsman. In early life he was known as a first-class man in Leicestershire, and as such his name is to be found in the magazine records of that celebrated county. The harriers from which our selection of favourites is made, he kept for ten or twelve years previous to his decease at his seat, Swaffham Hall, near Newmarket, having commenced as a Master of Hounds with some rabbit beagles. These in time he changed for the more modern harrier, which he continued to cross with the different packs of foxhounds in his neighbourhood. The hounds in our plate, indeed, have a great deal of the foxhound about them-too much so, may be, for some of our connoisseurs who object to the right-away style in which poor puss is now raced to death. From no regular kennel-book having been kept, we are unable to offer, as we could have wished,

If

any account by pedigree of the different kennels from which Mr. Allix bred his hounds. Latterly, however, we are told the majority of the entries were "home produce," so that we may argue from this the pack to have arrived at a sufficient degree of excellence. showing a succession of good sport be the test, they certainly well warrant us in introducing them here as a very superior kind of harrier. In private life, and we may add in every way, Mr. Allix was a good specimen of the English Country Gentleman. Plain and unaffected in his manners, hearty and hospitable to his friends, as kind and good to the poor, he has left a name with that highest recommendation of being best spoken of where best known.

A shout of Cockaign rends the æther,
With its loud Stentorian roar :
Go and hear it; you have never
Heard a yell like this before!
It rings as though Eolian caverns
Were the battle-ground of gales,
Or the penal realms of Hades

Uttered forth all sinners' wails!
Mingled sounds of joy and fury-
Pæans of the Turfite's gain-
Blank dismay of hopeful thousands-
Horrid dirge of "public" pain!
Gold "invested" on the fav'rite-
Flying Childers "safe to win"-
Inward groans for counted treasure-
Sorrow for departed tin!
Curses on the wily jockey-

Glory for the hope forlorn"-
El-Doradoes Californian

Vanished since the early morn!
Where is all the teeming guerdon

To be added to the hoard?

When, oh! when shall "borrow'd balance "
To the "lender be restored?

Soon are scamp'rings o'er the channel,
Midnight flittings by the train,
Saunt'rers on the cliffs of Calais-
When will these return again?
I see them in the dingy auberge,
Cursing fickle Fortune's freak-
Luckless minions, who are nearly
Crockfords in the DERBY week!

April, 1849.

"WITHIN RANGE.”

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY A. COOPER, R. A.

"When a man intends to compasse a shoote among fowle he must have some mouing shadow or shelter to walke by him; in this case there is nothing better than the stalking horse, which is an old jade trayned up for that use, which being stripped naked, and haueing nothing but a string about the neather chappe of two or three yards longe, will gently, and as you have ocation to urge him, walke up and down in the water, which way you will haue him, plodding and eating upon the grass or other stuffe that growes therein; and being hardy and stoute, without taking any affright at the report of the piece behind his fore shoulder, bending your body downe low by his side, and keeping his body still full between you and the fowle. Then haueing (as was before shewed) chosen your marke, you shall take your leuell from before the fore part of the horse, shooting as it were between the horse's neck and the water, which is more safe and suer than taking the leuell under the horse's belly, and much lesser to be perceaved; the shoulder of the horse covering the body of the man, and the horse's legges shaddowing the legges of the man also: and as thus you stalke upon the great blanke waters so you may stalke also along the banks of brookes or great rivers, by little and little winning the fowle to as neare a station as can be desired; and thus you may do also upon the firme ground, whether it be on moor, heath, or other rotten earth, or else upon the tylthe where green corn groweth."

So adviseth gentle Master Gervase Markham, in his delectable work "The Art of Fowling ;" and so getteth" within range," by help of his good mare Maggie, our Highland sportsman. Still, with all the recommendations of the stalking horse for making a quiet shot and a good picture, we question very much whether the practice does not approach nearer to poaching than anything else. Indeed, putting its rank as a means of sport entirely out of consideration, the name itself is little more than a bye-word now in a modern sportsman's vocabulary. In good Master Markham's day, when gentlemen were noways particular how they did it so long as they did bag their game somehow or other, the stalking horse no doubt had his proper place and value in an establishment. We should look again, however, in these times at any "old jade trayned up for that use:" the stalker with us calls up very different companions of the chase to group around him-the pottering along up and down the water, "plodding and eating upon the grasse, and all such goodly doings of the "mouing shadow," have given place to the noble-looking, high-couraged, eager-straining deer-hound, who, instead of going gently along with two or three yards of string hanging loose about his neck, will pull poor Sandy head over heels in the strength of his resolve as he tears down the mountain side.

Still, let the Highland laddie take his shot as Mr. Cooper allows it