426 mms ot tbe 1buntina*3Ftel^ 



hardly regret that it was burned to the ground in 1720, 

 seeing that, but for this mishap, there would probably 

 never have arisen the Lowther Castle which is the pride 

 of Cumberland and Westmoreland to-day. 



But the second earl has a still greater claim upon 

 those who read these pages, for he introduced a new 

 feature into the house of Lowther. Hitherto there had 

 been among them lawyers, statesmen, virtuosi, but no 

 sportsman. The second earl supplied that defect. As 

 Sir William Lowther he hunted the Cottesmore country 

 from 1788 to 1802, and was celebrated for the strength 

 and size of his hounds. Sir Gilbert Heathcote succeeded 

 him, Lambert carrying the horn, and the well-known 

 Leicestershire rough-rider, Dick Christian, immortalised 

 by the ' Druid,' had care of the stud. When Sir Gilbert 

 Heathcote resigned, Sir William Lowther, who had been 

 created Earl of Lonsdale, again took the Cottesmore in 

 hand, and hunted the country from 1806 to 1842, when 

 he gave place to Sir Richard Sutton. Lord Lonsdale 

 was a contemporary of Meynell, but never would breed 

 from his blood. He persisted in keeping the large, slow- 

 hunting hounds to which he had always been accustomed, 

 and a good fox over the country was ' above his hands.' 



The third earl, who succeeded his father in 1844, also 

 possessed somewhat similar tastes in this respect. He 

 was an ardent lover of sport, and has left his name im- 

 perishably stamped on the records of the Turf by the 

 victory of his horse Spaniel in the Derby of 1831. He 

 was, moreover, like some of his successors, a liberal patron 

 of Music and the Drama, and paid large subsidies for 

 the maintenance of Italian Opera in London. There 

 was something of the virtuoso in him, too, and his craze 

 for collecting rare porcelain was a god-send to the 



