Ubc iSavis of Xonsbale 435 



Lord Lonsdale was concerned, he had done everything 

 that human foresight could imagine. Both himself and 

 his horses were trained to the hour, and we may say that 

 neither was in the least degree tired or blown by their 

 very severe exertions. Harness and carriages combined 

 lightness and strength, and after the race was over, when 

 it is always easy to criticise and find fault, it was impossible 

 to see what more could have been done to have made better 

 time. The roads after the snow were decidedly woolly, 

 and in places the wheels cut deep ; this would, of course, 

 affect time. Then half a minute was lost by a horseman 

 being unable to pull his horse out of the road, and quite 

 as much when an over-zealous policeman wanted to 

 interfere. The feat will go down to posterity as one of 

 the finest performances in the history of sport' 



This was the crowning achievement of Lord Lonsdale's 

 sporting career, and, to my thinking, it stamps him as 

 a true sportsman of the good old English type, a 

 worthy successor of George Osbaldeston and Thomas 

 Assheton Smith. 



As Master of the Quorn, Lord Lonsdale's thirteen 

 years' reign has been a brilliant one, and for many a 

 long day men will speak with admiration of the famous 

 Barkby Holt Run on December 14, 1894, when the 

 bitch pack, flying close and swift as pigeons, ran their 

 fox, a rare stout goer, for two hours and five minutes, 

 covering twenty-seven miles from point to point, and 

 were almost at his brush when he got to ground in a 

 rabbit-hole. But the most remarkable feature of the 

 run was that the Master and all the hunt-servants were 

 up at the finish, each having ridden every yard with the 

 hound's — an incident which, considering the clinking pace, 

 is, I imagine, unparalleled in the annals of fox-hunting. 



