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make himself agreeable. There was in him too much 

 o( the /or/iUr in re, and too little of the suaviterin modo. 

 He was more admired than liked. Yet this brilliant 

 and distinguished company assembled to render their 

 spontaneous homage to his grand qualities as a sports- 

 man. It was, indeed, a red-letter day in the life of 

 Thomas Assheton Smith. 



In 1845, his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, 

 became seriously ill, and the doctors said that she must 

 winter in Madeira. Both husband and wife were loth 

 to leave Tedworth. She had her schools and her poor 

 and her household ; he had his stables and kennels, and 

 the great sport which was his one jo}' in life. How 

 could either of them exist apart from all that made life 

 worth living for ? Then the happy thought occurred to 

 the master : Why not bring Madeira to England ? So 

 he set to work and planned out a magnificent con- 

 servatory or winter garden, three hundred and fifteen 

 feet long and forty feet wide. Within this glass-roofed 

 enclosure — a miniature Crystal Palace, six years in 

 advance of Sir Joseph Paxton's wondrous fabric — Mrs 

 Smith was to take her daily exercise in a temperature 

 always the same. There were broad walks laid wuth 

 the finest gravel, thousands of beautiful plants, flowers 

 of brilliant hues and sweetest fragrance. A corridor of 

 glass nine hundred and sixty-five feet in length, warmed 

 throughout with hot-water pipes, connected this winter 

 garden with the house, and, altogether, there was a walk 

 of no less than four hundred and thirt)- )'ards straight on 

 end, all under glass. 



The time came when the only exercise Thomas 

 Assheton Smith was able to take was under that glass 

 roof, and here, after mounting one of his favourite old 



