288 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



Giles Morgan, a neighbouring farmer, had 100 a 

 year to hunt them, and find his own horse. Those 

 were days when Lord Sondes would bring out seventy 

 couples, harriers and foxhounds, in one grand chaotic 

 mass, run a fox to ground, and get back to Lees 

 Court at night, some thirty couples short, so that the 

 men of Kent could not complain of lack of variety in 

 their field sports. Jim has put his arm out five 

 times, and so badly on one occasion that his whips 

 could not pull it in, and had to ride on with the 

 hounds and leave him. However he was helped on 

 to his horse, where a chance pressure of the limb on 

 the saddle sent it once more into its socket. Hence 

 the reason he still characteristically assigns for his 

 daring riding, " As I cannot open gates, I must ride 

 over them :" a. sentiment about as terse and decisive 

 as any in the English language. No wonder his 

 sons, Ben, Jack, Goddard, and Tom, ride to hounds 

 as four brothers never rode before. 



The most fortunate sale we remember, of the pro- 

 duce of one hunting mare, was in the case of the 

 dam of Panza, Clipper, and Clinker, which t noble 

 leash averaged 633 guineas a-piece. They were all 

 the property of the then Mr Holyoake, who sold 

 Clinker, after he had ridden him a couple of seasons, 

 to Captain Ross for 900 or 1000 guineas, and re- 

 tained Panza, who was less than Clinker, and gene- 

 rally deemed the cleverest of the three. Clinker, 

 along with his great rival, dasher, Assheton, and 

 Jack-a'-Laiitern, were popularly considered the he- 

 roes of the Homeric age of hunting, as Moonraker, 

 Grimaldi, Vyvian, and Lottery were of steeple- 

 chasing. He was rather a short thorough- bred 

 bay horse, of great power, between sixteen and six- 

 teen one, up to fourteen stone, with a long lean 

 head, long in his pasterns, and very fast, but rather 

 high-tempered, as all the Clinkers were, and, like 

 Lottery, a very nervous water jumper. Good judges 



