THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



' Your advice is good/ replied our hero ; ' I will at once 

 act upon it. In the first place, I shall be quite at ease in my 

 mind, from the reflection that I shall not be drawing too fast 

 on my banker ; and, in the next, I shall no doubt profit by what 

 I see in various countries, and in the various sportsmen whom I 

 shall meet in them.' 



Shortly aftej.- this conversation took place, Frank Raby 

 commenced his tour, fixing upon Cheshire as his start, and 

 for this very good reason : he was informed that the hounds 

 which hunted the country were at that period under the 

 management of a first-rate sportsman of the school of that 

 day, no other than George Home, whose family had been long 

 seated in this aristocratic country. Nor was he misinformed 

 on this subject: he found a most effective kennel of hounds, 

 with a truly scientific sportsman at their head, and he also 

 found — the surest test of merit — that his blood was sought 

 after in some of the first establishments of those days. But 

 for the country he could not say much. Having had a taste 

 of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Warwickshire, he 

 found himself cramped, as it were, in the small fields of 

 Cheshire ; neither were some of his horses at all calculated 

 for its fences, which were, for the most part, hedges placed on 

 narrow banks, or 'cops,' as they are called there, strengthened 

 by a deep and often blind ditch. This kind of fence not only 

 requires a practised horse, very quick and ready with his legs, 

 as he must spring from the cop, when the ditch is on the 

 landino- side, but it also requires a practised and good horse- 

 man to get him over it with safety, when he becomes what is 

 termed 'pumped out' by the pace. Temper, Kkewise, and 

 that of a peculiar nature, is almost indispensable here; that 

 is to say, the courage and resolution so desirable in horses 

 Avho have to face the thickly-set thorn fences of the countries 

 we have just alluded to, are the reverse of what is wanting 

 here. Extreme steadiness is required— amounting, indeed, to 

 slackness — at the generality of the fences we have been de- 

 scribing ; and it being the lot of our hero to have only two of 

 his stud (which consisted of eight hunters and two hacks) 

 possessing these qualities, he never went out without a fall. 

 But he profited by these mishaps in more ways than one. 

 Before he had been a month in the country, his horses were 

 up to every description of trap, in the first place ; and, in the 



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