*' The Gentleman in Black." 4S 



he did. I hope he is none the worse for gettinf^ 

 planted at that- deep uncovered drain, Hughley way. 

 I hear the Wheatland gave up at 2-30 p.m. to-day 

 — early for a young master ! — and that the North 

 Stafford did not essay to hunt at all. 



THIRTEENTH WEEK, January 18th to the 23iid. 



The majority of people think that frozen-out fox 

 hunters are discontented mortals. This is true of a few- 

 only of them, especially those who have a dozen or so 

 horses in their stables eating their oats in idleness^ and 

 whose resources do not lie in the direction of business, or 

 other sports ; whose arrears of work that have been put 

 by for a rainy day are happily not to he found, and to 

 whom ennui and frost are synonymous. These Borderer 

 pities, and for them he cannot prescribe a remedy. 



I promised, when the frost came, to cut a leaf out of 

 the old " G-entleman in Black," for the benefit of mv 

 readers, especially the ladies. He wrote just a quarter of 

 a century ago, and was facile priiiceps in his own sj^ecial 

 line. With a particular strain of blue bluod in his veins 

 he moved in the highest sphere of his day in Leicester- 

 shire, and for piquant, pointed writing on any subject 

 that he had made his own, he equalled if not excelled, 

 AVhyte Melville. 



I do not make myself responsible, ladies, for his 

 opinions on " Ladies' Habits." Here they are. 



<' I fear, now that I have written it, that the title looks 

 a little alarming. To attack what women, and what habits 

 is the natural question that suggests itself, as ' The 

 gentleman in Black' puts lance in rest. Be assured, 

 ye more lovely daughters of lovely mothers it is your 

 riding habits only. Or may I not speak more correctly, 

 and call them habits of riding, transferring my censures 

 from your costumes to your customs. Feeling^ as every 

 man of gallantry must, an interest in your welfare far be- 

 yond expression ; knowing, too, how that welfare must be 

 bound up in the creation of certain feelings in our sex, 

 forgive me, if I venture, at this stupid season of the year,. 



