TAIN TO INVERNESS. 83 



visitors on the different styles of preachers in the 

 town. When he had run his eye once over them, he 

 seemed to fathom their taste. " You would like a 

 very rousing gentleman; I've just one to suit you : go 

 to ;" or, ' ' I think I'll send you to the Establish- 

 ment ;" and off they went on their various ways, this 

 side the water or over the water, meekly and nothing 

 doubting. 



Inverness has already twice taken its turn in the 

 Highland Society's circuit. The thick, short-legged, 

 and "handsome Belville" was here in 1846 on his 

 " grand tour;" and although that caustic moral- 

 ist, Anthony Maynard, of Marton-le-Moor, would 

 persist to the day of his death in saying that " he 

 was good enough if you backed his hind quarters 

 into a hedge," the judges at the three national shows 

 of that year saw nothing to compare with him. The 

 curiosities of the show were Lord Cawdor's Old Scotch 

 ewes, a West Highland heifer (in which Tom Thumb 

 and Commodore Nutt might have rejoiced), and a 

 trigenarian Highland mare, suckling her twentieth 

 foal. On the second occasion in '56 the brothers 

 Cruickshank all but swept the board with short- 

 horns. M'Combie sustained his Par,is prestige to 

 the full with Hanton, Charlotte, her twelve-year- 

 old dam The Queen who was second to her, the 

 Pair Maid of Perth who was third in the cow class, 

 and his other black Venuses. Lord Southesk's 

 Druid was in his lusty youth ; Simson of Blain- 

 slie and Collie of Ardgay shared the Leicester prizes ; 



G 2 



