34^ History of the English Landed Interest. 



breeders. Mr. Smith of Northamptonshire is just receiving 

 one for a wether weighing fifty-four pounds a quarter.^ To 

 his Grace's huge delight the Bedfordshire men have gained 

 the rewards for successful ploughing with horses, but the 

 prize for the best implement goes to Norfolk. The morning 

 passes away all too quickly, and now the chief function of the 

 day is at hand. Punctually at 3 p.m. the Duke presides at 

 the great dinner in the Abbey hall, and after the numerous 

 viands have been discussed and the King's health drunk, there 

 is time at last to glance around and see who is present. Some 

 two hundred leading agriculturists, of which one is a royal 

 prince and many are of European reputation, grace the various 

 tables. " Success to Agriculture " is proposed by Sii' Joseph 

 Banks, President of the Royal Society, and responded to by 

 Sir John Sinclair, President of the Board of Agriculture. The 

 " Fleece " is given by the Duke of Manchester, and suitably 

 acknowledged by Bakewell.^ The " Plough " and other toasts 

 follow. Some one gets Arthur Young on his legs, and some 

 one else, bent on hearing the Northumbrian buiT, has Duckett 

 up. Culley, who has long adopted as his home the county 

 of the last speaker, sits yonder debating the Enclosure ques- 

 tion with Stone of Leicestershire, and many others are present 

 who have dragged themselves away from their reports to 

 the Board in order to attend the meeting. Coke of Holkham 

 is offering to lay a considerable sum in a wager on the 

 superiority of his own sheep over any other wool-producing 

 quadruped in the kingdom, and some one else is waxing 

 noisily eloquent on the merits of Hereford cattle. It is 6 

 o'clock before the last toast is honoured, and the company 

 make the most of the twilight to secure their rams for the 

 ensuing autumn. Thus glide by five days of early summer, 

 fraught with importance to the interests of agriculture. The 

 Duke clears over a £1,000 in letting out on hire some seventy 



' This was in 1799. — GentlemayVs Magazine, August, 1799. 



' I must ask the reader's pardon for a few anachronisms wittingly 

 perpetrated in order to make the picture complete. Bakewell, for ex- 

 ample, was already dead, and they were drinking his memory in solemn 

 sUence. 



