260 The Post and the Paddock. 



who " thought" the hounds were not so near, when he 

 jumped almost into the middle of them " Now you 

 know, sir, you never thought at all." This horse- 

 leading trait reminds us of one in the late Sir Charles 

 Bunbury, who trained his horses in private almost en- 

 tirely under his own eye, and fearing lest they might 

 be nervous in public, frequently made the lads (who 

 were never allowed to use spurs or anything but a 

 small stick to them), wear his colours when they 

 cleaned them. The Suffolk baronet latterly would 

 never have his horses sweated or tried on a Good 

 Friday, as during a trial on one of these anniversaries, 

 both his horses fell and broke their backs, and each 

 of the jockeys got a fractured thigh. 



Vivalda got big bad-mouthed stock, but as stout as 

 the day was long, and Knight of the Whistle bid fair 

 to tread in Cannon Ball's footsteps in Leicestershire, 

 up to 1855, when the Irishmen purchased him. 

 The Knight's stock are principally roan chestnuts, 

 white-legged and white-faced, like himself; and we 

 doubt whether he ever got a bad hunter, although the 

 whole of them are a little short in the back ribs. De- 

 spite this defect, they are rapidly becoming favourites 

 with the Melton men ; and one of them, Mr. Anger- 

 stein's The Rapid Roan, beat off everything in a very 

 fast thirty-five minutes from Stanford Gorse, with a 

 second fox, late on a March afternoon in 1855. We 

 should fancy this horse pretty nearly if not the 

 premier of the Knight's stock so far, and although he 

 is about sixteen and a half hands, he was out of a 

 low, white-legged, black, pony sort of mare, which 

 ran in a carrier's cart, after acting for six years as 

 hack to an eighteen-stone surgeon. There seems to 

 be a special luck attending surgeons' hacks both on 

 the turf and at the coverside. Lancet, who was bought 

 not for 501 guineas but 620 guineas, from Mr. John 

 Nethercoat by Mr. Cooke over the Pytcheley Club 

 dinner table, was, as we have seen, originally one, and 



