THE CHACE. 
superior caste ; insomuch that those who observed him 
were little astonished with the accounts of his personal 
activity in the first weeks after his return to Portugal : 
he, at that crisis, is said to have ridden six hundred 
miles in six successive days, a feat which those who have 
travelled on Portuguese roads will appreciate. So much 
for, we fear, one of the last persons to whom anybody 
would think of applying Wordsworth's eulogium on 
" the Shepherd Lord :" 
"In him the savage virtue of the chace, 
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead." 
It is a hackneyed enough remark, that both ancient 
and modern writers make sad work of it when they 
attempt a description of heaven. To describe a run 
with fox-hounds is not a much easier task ; but to make 
the attempt with any other county than Leicestershire 
in our eye, would be giving a chance away. Let us 
then suppose ourselves to have been at Ashby Pasture, 
in the Quorn country, with Mr. Osbaldeston's hounds, 
in the year 1826, when that pack was at the height of 
its well-merited celebrity. Let us also indulge ourselves 
with a fine morning in the first week of February, and 
at least two hundred well-mounted men by the cover's 
side. Time being called say a quarter past eleven, 
nearly our great-grandfathers' dinner hour the hounds 
approach the furze-brake, or the gorse, as it is called in 
that region. " Hark in, hark /" with a slight cheer, 
and perhaps one wave of his cap, says Mr. Osbaldeston, 
I 
L. .. _ _____ ' J__ !!____ ZT_ 
36 
