FOX-HUNTING AND WARFARE 319 



tears fall quick and fast from the widow and the 

 fatherless while they sob out a blessing on the 

 memory of their lost benefactor, on the kindly 

 heart always ready to console, on the generous hand 

 always open to relieve, on the gallant handsome face 

 that never hardened towards a suppliant, as it never 

 blanched before a foe." Not the least pleasing in- 

 cident of his life is that he met his death while 

 riding out to visit and console the bereaved family 

 of a late dependent. The animal he was riding, 

 young and restive, reared and fell, crushing him to 

 the earth beneath its weight. Assistance was near 

 at hand, for the house was hardly a mile off; but 

 it came too late, and Lord Cardigan never spoke 

 again. Thus beneath his tall ancestral trees, amongst 

 the green slopes and woodland scenery of the home 

 he loved so well, but quitted so readily at the call of 

 honour, there is rest for the last of the Brudenells. 



But it is not my duty to discuss in these pages the 

 conduct of Lord Cardigan in the Crimean War ; it is 

 my duty to describe him in the hunting-field. 



Major Whyte-Melville has described him as one 

 of the finest and boldest horsemen in Europe. 

 Certainly many of his doings in the hunting-field 

 are still talked of in Leicestershire. Once he rode 

 a tired horse into the Welland. On another occasion 

 he and his relative, Mr. Wilbraham Tollemache, had 

 interchanged some good-humoured badinage as to 

 who should go first in a certain run. The commoner 

 was as brilliant a rider as the peer, and a better 



