THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



satisfaction araoiig- his relations and friends \yho liad wept 

 over liis closing grave. But we are happy to say our hero 

 was not one of iliis class. With an income already equal to 

 all his wants, and all his wishes ; with health and spirits, which 

 gave the highest zest to the enjoyment of them, what more 

 could he desire ? In fact, he may be said to have had hut 

 one ivish not tvithin Jiis means to gratify; but, had anybody 

 imagined that the gratification of that wish, and the life of his 

 excellent father, bore the most distant reproach to an equality 

 in his well-balanced mind, he would have found himself 

 egregiously mistaken. However, the one thing having been 

 snatched away from him was no reason why he should not avail 

 himself of the other; so, having become tired of his parlia- 

 mentary duties, for which he did not consider himself qualified, 

 he resigned his seat at the end of the second session ; but having, 

 as he thought, qualified himself by experience in the field for 

 the principal office of a sportsman, he unhesitatingly accepted 

 of one of the best of the midland countries, which became 

 vacant, by the resignation of a noble lord, in the second year 

 after his father's decease. 



The fine income he was now in the possession of rendered 

 pecuniary assistance unnecessary, and there was nothing wanting 

 to insure success to the new undertaking but — what must 

 always operate against that of all undertakings — the benefit of 

 experience. Frank Raby was a sportsman, and in the truest 

 acceptation of that term. He loved hunting to his very soul ; 

 he had studied it in its theory as well as in the practice of it ; 

 he understood it well in all that related to the field; but he 

 had never been a master of hounds, still less their huntsman. 

 Like a sensible man, then, he was anxious for instruction 

 from the best source, and consequently wrote the following- 

 letter to the person whom he considered most able to furnish 

 him with it : 



' Melton Mowbray, 18—. 



' My dear Sir, — 



' I have the following inducements to impose a task upon 

 you. First — the circumstance of your pack having been the 

 one with wdiich I made my start in the fox-hunting world ; 

 secondly — your science and experience in all that relates to 

 fox-hunting ; thirdly — your good-nature and kind-heartedness ; 



369 2a 



