closely; and being assembled in the bottom, each congratulates his neighbour on the excellent condition and stanchness of the hounds, and the admirable view that has been afforded them of their peculiar style of hunting.  At this interesting period, a “regular swell” from Melton Mowbray, unknown to everyone except his tailor, to whom he owes a long tick, makes his appearance and affords abundance of merriment for our sportsmen.  He is just turned out of the hands of his valet, and presents the very beau-ideal of his caste—­“quite the lady,” in fact.  His hat is stuck on one side, displaying a profusion of well-waxed ringlets; a corresponding infinity of whisker, terminating at the chin, there joins an enormous pair of moustaches, which give him the appearance of having caught the fox himself and stuck its brush below his nose.  His neck is very stiff; and the exact Jackson-like fit of his coat, which almost nips him in two at the waist, and his superlatively well-cleaned leather Andersons,[2] together with the perfume and the general puppyism of his appearance, proclaim that he is a “swell” of the very first water, and one that a Surrey sportsman would like to buy at his own price and sell at the other’s.  In addition to this, his boots, which his “fellow” has just denuded from a pair of wash-leather covers, are of the finest, brightest, blackest patent leather imaginable; the left one being the identical boot by which Warren’s monkey shaved himself, while the right is the one at which the game-cock pecked, mistaking its own shadow for an opponent, the mark of its bill being still visible above the instep; and the tops—­whose pampered appetites have been fed on champagne—­are of the most delicate cream-colour, the whole devoid of mud or speck.  The animal he bestrides is no less calculated than himself to excite the risible faculties of the field, being a sort of mouse colour, with dun mane and tail, got by Nicolo, out of a flibbertigibbet mare, and he stands seventeen hands and an inch.  His head is small and blood-like, his girth a mere trifle, and his legs, very long and spidery, of course without any hair at the pasterns to protect them from the flints; his whole appearance bespeaking him fitter to run for half-mile hunters’ stakes at Croxton Park or Leicester, than contend for foxes’ brushes in such a splendid country as the Surrey.  There he stands, with his tail stuck tight between his legs, shivering and shaking for all the world as if troubled with a fit of ague.  And well he may, poor beast, for—­oh, men of Surrey, London, Kent, and Middlesex, hearken to my word—­on closer inspection he proves to have been shaved!!![3]

[Footnote 2:  Anderson, of South Audley Street, is, or was, a famous breeches-maker.]

[Footnote 3:  Shaving was in great vogue at Melton some seasons back.  It was succeeded by clipping, and clipping by singeing.]