248 mnQB ot tbe •JbunttnG=«fiel^ 



an otter, passed him in mid-stream, ' Mind, Wilbraham, I 

 was in first.' But let his old friend Whyte Melville 

 describe the chief incidents in Lord Cardigan's hunting 

 career. 



' When not engaged in military duty, living either at 

 his own home or within easy reach of that grassy range 

 of uplands known as High Leicestershire, probably no 

 man has ever seen so many good runs in a lifetime as 

 the late Lord Cardigan. He began hunting when a 

 boy, he followed the chase unremittingly during man- 

 hood, and up to threescore years and ten could have 

 sailed away on a good horse from nineteen out of every 

 twenty men who got a start with him from a covert side. 

 His style of riding was peculiarly easy and graceful, his 

 spare well-shaped figure and length of limb giving him 

 every advantage in the saddle ; while in that essential 

 quality for which we can find no better word than 

 pluck, it is hardly necessary to say he was unrivalled. 

 The manner in which he crossed a country — and High 

 Leicestershire is a country that of all others demands 

 great determination in man and horse — is best conveyed 

 by the epithet " undeniable." He gave the animal 

 credit for those qualities its rider possessed in so eminent 

 a degree ; and, to the honour of his horses be it said, 

 they seldom failed him at his need, facing and getting 

 over extraordinarily large fences with apparent ease and 

 safety. He left them very much to their own sagacity, 

 never pulling them about, and taking his falls, when he 

 did " come to grief," with a perfect good humour and 

 sangfroid. Of these he could not but have sustained a 

 considerable number, some of a truly serious nature. 

 Amongst them perhaps the worst was one over a gate 

 into the Uppingham Road at the end of a good run 



