The Southdown Foxhounds. 145 



venture to suggest that every opportunity should 

 be taken by those riding with the various packs 

 throughout the country of showing courtesy and 

 consideration to the owners and occupiers of the 

 land over which they are ungrudgingly allowed 

 to go. 



On the following morning the Southdown met at 

 Portslade, a pretty village close to Shoreham, and as 

 I passed the vicarage, snugly sheltered by flowering 

 laurestinus, evergreen oaks, and other handsome 

 shrubs, I paused for a moment, suggesting to a com- 

 panion riding by my side, that such a benefice would 

 exactly have suited me — £800 a-year, a population 

 limited in numbers, healthy and happy in their 

 smiling homes, few deaths, numerous weddings, and 

 many christenings, combined with the opportunity 

 of hunting three days a-week. What more could 

 man want? Had fate placed me in that happy 

 position, I know I should have been popular with 

 my parishioners, as I would have been to their 

 virtues very kind, and to their faults a little — in 

 fact not a little — blind — consequently we should 

 have got on well together. As it was, however, 

 I sighed and rode on. Arriving at Portslade, I found 

 a large number of well-mounted men and many 

 ladies on horseback and in carriages, assembled in 

 a meadow adjoining Mr. Doudney's farm house. 



Amongst the many regular attendants on the 

 Southdown I noticed Mr. Streatfield, the Master; 

 Mr. and Mrs. Morrell (from Oxfordshire), the latter 

 riding Major, a remarkably fine five-year-old ches- 

 nut horse, recently purchased at the long figure of 

 four hundred guineas ; Mr. Dewe, Mr. Lake (from 



K 



