84 Ikinos of tbe 1buntinG*fiel^ 



an Homeric contest, worthy to rank with Arthur 

 Wellesley's famous ' mill ' with Bobus Smith and that 

 tragic combat between Fred Wood and Francis x^shley 

 Cooper, elder brother of the late Earl of Shaftesbury, 

 when, after two hours' desperate fighting, young Ashley 

 Cooper was taken senseless from the ring and died 

 the same evening. Conceive what an outburst of 

 indignant public feeling there would be nowadays if a boy 

 were killed in a fight ! But both the boys and the parents 

 of Assheton Smith's days were made of sterner stuff than 

 they are now. I am told that boys don't fight nowadays 

 at our great public schools. For their mothers' sakes I 

 am glad that it is so, but I am not perfectly satisfied 

 that the boys themselves are any the better for the 

 abolition of the good old knuckle-fight. 



Thomas Assheton Smith, like most English gentle- 

 men of his day, was an accomplished boxer. A sound 

 knowledge of the art of pugilism was then considered a 

 necessary part of every young gentleman's education, and 

 Thomas Assheton Smith found the accomplishment 

 invaluable to him in after life. His biographer, Sir 

 John Eardley Wilmot, to whom I am largely indebted 

 for the materials of this sketch, thus comments upon 

 the fistic prowess of his hero : — 



Mr Smith's skill in pugilistic encounters, and his 

 determined courage in standing up, even against 

 superior strength, served him in good stead on various 

 occasions, especially when, as Master of Hounds, he came 

 in contact with ' roughs,' who imagined they might bully 

 him with impunity. Two or three anecdotes may well 

 find a place here. 



Orator Hunt was a bold rider, and, like Mr Smith, well 

 able to use his fists. During the Oxford career' of the 



