198 mms of tbe ir3untina=3fielb 



close consideration. Lord Ribblesdale, who accepted the 

 Mastership at that time, has recently given an amusing 

 account of the 'suicidal conditions' on which he took office, 

 for he was appointed on the understanding that he was 

 to prepare all who were connected with the Royal Hunt 

 for their latter end. The Buckhounds, he was told, were 

 doomed ; the country would not tolerate them any longer, 

 and it was to be his business to ' commit the happy 

 despatch.' But threatened men proverbially live long, 

 and this thought, no doubt, influenced Lord Ribblesdale 

 in accepting the appointment. ' I made up my mind 

 very quickly,' he says, ' that the office and the responsi- 

 bilities would be entirely to my liking. Ascot Races and 

 the terrors of the Royal Enclosure were in a reassuring 

 distance. Forest hunting, on the other hand, was 

 already beckoning to me in the near and inviting fore- 

 ground. After going through the stables at Cumberland 

 Lodge with Lord Coventry, the most helpful and enter- 

 taining of predecessors, on a glorious day in August, and 

 just making acquaintance with the hounds, the sun- 

 bathed kennel green, the wisteria in heavy bloom against 

 the yellow brick of the hack stables, I determined that 

 life was sweet and that I would die hard.' But after all, to 

 die was not required of him, for the hand which did 

 not hesitate to pull down the Irish Church paused in its 

 iconoclastic zeal before so venerable an institution as the 

 Royal Buckhounds. 



And certainly, if antiquity be a valid plea for preserva- 

 tion, the Royal Buckhounds are entitled to the full 

 benefit of that plea. For they have indeed ' a smack of 

 age ' about them, ' a relish of the saltness of time.' Those 

 who have read Mr J. P. Hore's ' History of the Royal 

 Buckhounds,' or the learned disquisition by Mr Edward 



