THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



day in print, is accounted i'or : — " Mr. Meyncll's hounds have 

 had great sport this season. Two extraordinary runs happened, 

 o£ a very rare nature. One was an hour and twenty minutes, 

 witliout a check, in which they killed their fox. The other, 

 two hours and fifty minutes, without a cast, and killed. 

 The hounds, in the first run, kept well together, and only 

 tivo horses performed it ; the rest of • the field were unequal 

 to its fleetness. The other run alluded to was performed 

 by the whole of the pack ; and though all the hounds were 

 up at the death, two or three slackened in their pace just 

 at the last. Only one horse went the wJiole of it." ^ But we 

 shall live to see these evils remedied. Some person or 

 another, who has witnessed their extent, and reflected upon 

 the causes, will, one of these days, expose them. We shall 

 then hear less of tired horses, and very little of those killed 

 with hounds,' and of runs in which only one gets to the end, 

 as in the extract I have just quoted. Common sense, indeed, 

 oniLst at once direct us, if we but give it a chance to do so. If 

 hounds are every year better bred, and go faster, the breed of 

 our hunters mu«t also be higher and more pure. As the con- 

 dition of the former improves, so must that of the latter ; and 

 I have one consolation left me from the unfortunate occurrence 

 which has called forth these remarks. I have made up my 

 mind, in future, to give my horses every chance in their 

 favour that it is in my power to afibrd them. I have deter- 

 mined never to purcliase a horse not quite, or nearly, 

 thorough-bred, so long as I hunt in Leicestershire ; nor will I 

 ever throw a hunter quite out of condition again. " Let them 

 down a little in the summer," are my orders to my groom ; 

 " but lose not what has caused yoic so much trouble, and me 

 such expense, to obtain. Lose not that which, in fact, makes 

 a middling horse a good one ; for I fully agree with what I 

 heard that fine sportsman, John Warde, say, the other day, at 

 the cover-side of the Pytchley country, "half the goodness of 

 Jiorses goes in at their mouths!' ' 



' Will you favour us,' said Mr. Raby to his guest, •' with the 



^ See The Mcyncllian Systcui, by tlie late .John Hawkes, Es(i., p. 21. It 

 is more tlian iirobaljle that one of tlie three horses thns distinguished was ridden 

 by Mr. Hawkes himself, one of the finest horsemen of his (hiy, lioth over a 

 country and over a course. Many of my readers will remember The Printer, 

 and Featherlegs ; and that Mr. II. alvnajs rode horses of pure blood. 



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