296 mms of tbe 1buntina«'f ielD 



and how that gentleman was seen to obey the mandate 

 by taking her tenderly back to Essex with his own 

 hands. Mr Osbaldeston strolled up in the afternoon to 

 see the horses sold ; and old Percy was there, looking 

 over the lots in the stable, and recalling many a recol- 

 lection, as we sat on the corn-bin together, of the 

 triumphs of the " red and black cap " of Langton. With 

 him to train, and Sawyer, and then Conolly to ride, it 

 was perpetually seen in front at Salisbury, Weymouth, 

 and elsewhere in the " south countrie." Grey Marquis, 

 Presentiment, Garus, and Black-and-all-Black alone 

 won with it eighty times ; and the last became such a 

 hero in the Dorsetshire peasants' eyes, that even now 

 they would as soon strike a horse with a twig of horn- 

 beam as believe that their black knight could not have 

 vanquished Eclipse himself And so the great hunting 

 era of Eastbury passed away on that pleasant June 

 afternoon. The cry of another pack is heard in Coker 

 Wood and Badbury Rings ; but still, long after the 

 present century is numbered with the past, a pleasant 

 tradition will linger round Dorsetshire of how a former 

 Squire of Langton took to hounds when a mere college 

 stripling, and how his fifty-second and last season found 

 him with a heart as young and a cheer as shrill as ever.' 

 But ' the Meynell of the West,' as some of his ad- 

 mirers christened him, though he retired into private life, 

 never lost his interest in fox-hunting, and still retained 

 his position as the honoured ' Nestor of the Chase.' 

 There was another pursuit, too, which he followed with 

 unabated zest to the end, and that was farming. As a 

 practical agriculturist he had few superiors anywhere, 

 and among the admiring farmers far and near he 

 was ever spoken of as 'The Pride of Dorset.' It 



