We saw an advertisement the other day, where a low publican, in a manufacturing town, assured the subscribers to his coursing-club that he would take care to select open ground, with ‘plenty of stout hares,’ as if all the estates in the neighbourhood were at his command.  Another advertised a steeple-chase in the centre of a good hunting country—­’amateur and gentleman riders’—­with a half-crown ordinary at the end!  Fancy the respectability of a steeple-chase, with a half-crown ordinary at the end!

Our ‘Aristocratic’ was got up on the good-of-the-house principle.  Whatever benefit the Granddiddle Junction conferred upon the country at large, it had a very prejudicial effect upon the Old Duke of Cumberland Hotel and Posting House, which it left, high and dry, at an angle sufficiently near to be tantalized by the whirr and the whistle of the trains, and yet too far off to be benefited by the parties they brought.  This once well-accustomed hostelry was kept by one Mr. Viney, a former butler in the Scattercash family, and who still retained the usual ’old and faithful servant’ entree of Nonsuch House, having his beefsteak and bottle of wine in the steward’s room whenever he chose to call.  Viney had done good at the Old Duke of Cumberland; and no one, seeing him ‘full fig,’ would recognize, in the solemn grandeur of his stately person, the dirty knife-boy who had filled the place now occupied by the still dirtier Slarkey.  But the days of road travelling departed, and Viney, who, beneath the Grecian-columned portico of his country-house-looking hotel, modulated the ovations of his cauliflower head to every description of traveller—­from the lordly occupant of the barouche-and-four, down to the humble sitter in a gig—­was cut off by one fell swoop from all further traffic.  He was extinguished like a gaslight, and the pipe was laid on a fresh line.

Fortunately Mr. Viney was pretty warm; he had done pretty well; and having enjoyed the intimacy of the great ‘Jeames’ of railway times, had got a hint not to engage the hotel beyond the opening of the line.  Consequently, he now had the great house for a mere nothing until such times as the owner could convert it into that last refuge for deserted houses—­an academy, or a ‘young ladies’ seminary.’  Mr. Viney now, having plenty of leisure, frequently drove his ‘missis’ (once a lady’s maid in a quality family) up to Nonsuch House, as well for the sake of the airing—­for the road was pleasant and picturesque—­as to see if he could get the ‘little trifle’ Sir Harry owed him for post-horses, bottles of soda-water, and such trifles as country gentlemen run up scores for at their posting-houses—­scores that seldom get smaller by standing.  In these excursions Mr. Viney made the acquaintance of Mr. Watchorn; and a huntsman being a character with whom even the landlord of an inn—­we beg pardon, hotel and posting-house—­may associate without degradation, Viney and Watchorn became intimate.  Watchorn sympathized with Viney, and