2 74 The Post and the Paddock. 



pleasure. Freney was also after our own heart, while 

 Malakhoff was a magnificent sixteen-one fellow, and 

 quite the fastest and finest-actioned animal in the 

 stud. He is Irish bred, and was bought at York, 

 under another name, for 13O/. in 1854, and gradually 

 rose the gamut to 400 guineas, at which price he 

 passed into Sir Richard's hands, with the assurance 

 that he only wanted a couple of falls to make him 

 perfect ; but his lamented owner was never on his. 

 back in a run. As far as we can hear, the horses, 

 with the exception of Mr. Richard Button's (the 

 average for whose five best only fell from 328 guineas 

 to 298 guineas, when they came up to Tattersall's), 

 as a lot, turned out anything but well in their 

 new owners' hands, in comparison to what their 

 prices warranted. One of them, in fact, was sold that 

 very night at an 8o/. sacrifice. It must have been the 

 anxiety to have a relic of Quorn which forced the 

 prices at least thirty per cent., at that eventful sale. 

 The thermometer was below freezing point ; and as 

 we looked round at the old Hall, so rich in hunting 

 recollections of Meynell, Bellingham Graham, and 

 Osbaldeston, with its dingy yellow walls, its frozen 

 ponds, and its sad front door escutcheon, we could 

 hardly realize that the master-spirit of Leicestershire 

 had but six short weeks before sallied forth from it, 

 with his horn at his saddlebow, and his sons at his 

 side, to open his ninth Quorn season at Kirby Gate. 

 Sir Richard was only ten years old, and under the 

 care of a clergyman at Burton, when his hunting days 

 began. " The Squire," who had bought Lord Mon- 

 son's hounds, and was then hunting his seven seasons 

 in Lincolnshire, thought he seemed to have a taste for 

 the thing, and often persuaded his tutor to let the 

 boy-baronet leave his Cornelius Nepos for a morning, 

 and take a lesson under himself and Tom Sebright, 

 mounting him on a grey pony which belonged to the 

 latter. His fox-hunting Mentor, who was a perfect 



