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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 330, September 6, 1828 by Various
page 38 of 50 (76%)
smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and
passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first tallyho,
Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once perhaps in the
whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an idea that is
pursued, on a whirlwind of horses to a storm of canine music,--worthy,
both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors,
sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There
is, we verily believe it, nothing foxy in the fancy of one man in all
that glorious field of three hundred. Once off and away--while wood and
welkin rings--and nothing is felt--nothing is imaged in that hurricane
flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches, drains, brooks,
palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so
many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an enclosed,
cultivated, civilized, and Christian country. There they go--prince and
peer, baronet and squire,--the nobility and gentry of England, the
flower of the men of the earth, each on such steed as Pollux never
reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for could we imagine Bucephalus here,
ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very
first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse
for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards,
woods, farm-houses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples,
towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing
them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or
sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo.
Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a
hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current
of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all
astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber
of the five-barred gate--away over the ears flies the ex-rough-rider in
a surprising somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the
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