AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 51 



The taste for horseflesh has been in the family for 

 generations. Our friend's grandfather was a famous 

 gentleman-whip in the days of the Regency ; and the 

 walls of the billiard and smoking rooms are hung at 

 this present moment with a variety of portraits of 

 himself and his horses. In drab driving-coat, curl- 

 brimmed hat, and belcher scarf, he is springing his 

 team of bays over Five Mile Bottom ; he is doing 

 the Park behind Trojan and Traveller, the grey and 

 the chesnut, in his mail phaeton ; he is sending along 

 Marigold, his wonderful trotting mare, in a cloud of 

 dust before a mob of spectators, from a perch between 

 a pair of gigantic yellow wheels. That light of old 

 coaching-days, as well as his son who came after him, 

 used to help to horse the Highflyer, and drive it too. 

 Eheit) fugaces ! these times are gone. The great 

 posting-house of the u Wheatsheaf," half a mile from 

 the lodge gates, where a dozen of coaches used to 

 change horses daily, and which had stabling for a 

 hundred pair and more, has been tenanted for long 

 by an ordinary farmer, and the racks and mangers 

 have gone to wreck and ruin. The surrounding 

 agriculturists have to consign to more distant markets 

 the oats they used to shoot into its well-stored bins, 

 and the hay that was weekly delivered by the waggon- 

 load. But the present man does something to keep 

 up the family tradition. When he takes his carriage- 

 horses to town, connoisseurs will still turn to look at 

 them. His park hack is a model of symmetry, and 

 cost him considerably more than the best of his weight- 



