276 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



comes a banging roarer; when, to his horror, his 

 owii favourite loomed slowly in sight from the same 

 field. Julius Caesar was up to fifteen stone himself, 

 and regularly took his turn in the hunting field ; and 

 we have been told that he carried Earl.Lonsdale's 

 postman on oft' days between Cottesmore and Oak- 

 ham. His lordship always spoke of this horse, to the 

 last, as one of the best he ever rode ; and seeing 

 that his devotion to the chase once tempted him in 

 desperation, after he had been hopelessly frozen in 

 for three weeks, to have out his hounds and show his 

 visitors one of the best runs of the season through 

 six inches of snow, and to be perpetually led by 

 his groom through a run, in the sad interval which 

 preceded his 1000- guinea couching operation by 

 Alexander, he was no mean judge of their capa- 

 bilities. Bishop Bathurst, who seized a gun out of 

 his son's hands, and shot a cock-pheasant at eighty, 

 was not more enthusiastic ; and his ear, like that of 

 Fielding, the blind police magistrate, who knew the 

 tones of three thousand pickpockets' voices, was 

 marvellously accurate. In one instance, when he 

 was quite " dark/' he heard a gentleman, who had 

 not seen him or hunted with him for twenty seasons, 

 speak to Lambert at the meet, and he immediately 

 hailed him by name, and gave him a most cordial 

 welcome back to the Cottesmore. The leviathan 

 stud at Cottesmore, where every horse had his price, 

 was principally replenished by drafts from his tenants' 

 paddocks in the north, who were never allowed to 

 lack a well-selected hunter-sire ; and Julius Csesar, 

 who would have been perfection if his feet had been 

 quite sound (the failing point of too many of his 

 stock), stood at Fryatt's Melton Paddocks for 

 many years, and had even a larger average of 

 visitors than Belzoni. The produce, which made 

 great prices, were large, and had remarkably fine 

 tempers, a eulogy which could not generally be passed 



