40 MEMOIR OF 



The man who has once heard Russell hold 

 forth on some favourite topic, must indeed have 

 a very defective memory if he ever forget the 

 charm of his earnest, natural manner, or the 

 epigrammatic and pointed style in which he 

 was wont to tell the simplest tale ; like the 

 Wedding-guest, the listener ''cannot choose but 

 hear," spell-bound at once by his glittering eye 

 and winged words. 



To attempt a description of the sport he 

 saw with hounds during his residence at Oxford, 

 in the absence of written records, would be a 

 task beyond the design of the present memoir ; 

 but the adventure of one disastrous dav, on 

 which he went to a distant meet and never 

 saw a hound, must not be omitted, for it left 

 such an impression on his memory that to his 

 latest hour he spoke of it with mixed feelings 

 of disappointment and remorse. 



. The fixture was Sandford Brake; the hounds 

 those of his Grace the sixth Duke of Beaufort, 

 who, as the reader has already been informed, 

 hunted the Oxfordshire hills from Heythrop 

 at one season of the year, and his "home 

 country" from Badminton at another. The 

 fame of the pack, the favourite colour being 

 badger-pie, had at this period traversed the 

 length and breadth of the land. There were 

 no hounds like them ; none that combined so 

 perfectly the close hunting and hard driving 



