CHAPTER XIV. 



THE SHIRES. 



" EVERY species of fence every horse doesn't suit, 

 What's a good country hunter may here prove a brute," 



Sings that clerical bard who wrote the Billesdon-Coplow 

 poem, from which I have already quoted ; and it would 

 be difficult to explain more tersely than do these two 

 lines the difference between a fair useful hunter, and the 

 flyer we call par excellence " a Leicestershire horse ! " 



Alas ! for the favourite unrivalled over Gloucestershire 

 walls, among Dorsetshire doubles, in the level ploughs 

 of Holderness, or up and down the wild Derbyshire 

 hills, when called upon to gallop, we will say, from 

 Ashby pastures to the Coplow, after a week's rain, at 

 Quorn pace, across Quorn fences, unless he happens to 

 possess with the speed of a steeple-chaser, the courage 

 of a lion and the activity of a cat ! For the first mile 

 or two " pristinae virtutis haud immemor " he bears him 



