LIFE OF MYTTON. 



own acts, but certainly of his friends who encouraged 

 him, to spend ten thousand pounds to obtain a seat 

 in ParHament, in which he is said to have only sat 

 half-an-hour, and to the duties of which he was by 

 nature and habits utterly unfitted. I have reason, 

 however, to believe — for I never interrogated him — 

 he was what is termed a Church-and-king man ; in 

 other words, at that period, a Tory. But on this 

 subject he was also full of his jokes. For e.xample, 

 he had a famous race-horse called Anti-Radical ; 

 " But," said he, when speaking of him, " I always 

 call him Radical when he runs at Manchester." 



Without appearing to care about it, or ever boast- 

 ing of his success, Mr. Mytton was the best farmer 

 in his part of the county, occupying between three and 

 four hundred acres of land. Strange to say, at one 

 of the Shropshire agricultural meetings he gained 

 every prize for clean crops of grain, save one, a field 

 of barley, his claim for which was rejected from a 

 cause highly t)'pical of the man, — It was found to 

 contain " wild oats I " As may be supposed, the 

 report of the judge was the subject of much merri- 

 ment to the company. His planting, as I before 

 observed, was on a still larger scale, his object having 

 been two-fold ; first, to replace the fine old timber, 



