40 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. 



pew after a substantial Sunday early dinner, and of how 

 they used both of them to go to sleep. If the son woke 

 up first, it was all right ; but if the father found the son 

 asleep, he would rouse him with a hearty shake, accusing 

 him roundly of having no sense of religion, and predicting 

 all manner of evils, and the certainty of a bad end, if he 

 persisted in such reprehensible conduct. Mr. Landor was 

 hunting when Joe Leedham carried the horn, and towards 

 the end of the latter's time things were in a poor way. 

 He was all for "Eleu boick" at the first check, and Mr. 

 Landor used to mutter, "Confound that ' Eleu boick.' 

 It's all up now." 



The Rev. F. W. Spilsbury was another of the right 

 sort, and a brilliant horseman, riding very straight, and 

 always preferring to go fast at his fences to have a " smack 

 at the lot," as Mr. George Tyrwhitt Drake once said, as 

 he and Mr. Hatfield Harter were coming to a great tangled 

 boundary fence with no very clearly defined taking off 

 place and every likelihood of a ravine on the far side. 

 Mr. Spilsbury sowed the acorns, from which sprang the 

 oaks in the plantations which bear his name, in 1824. He 

 brought up his son to tread in his own footsteps, and the 

 latter clearly remembers a wonderful run from Repton 

 shrubs nearly to Leicester, when his father did not get 

 home till they were all in bed. 



The Rev. George Inge was another of the followers of 

 Mr. Meynell's hounds in those early days, being a splendid 

 example of the " Squarson of the old school." The 

 Morning Post had the following notice of him when he 

 died, in December, 1881 : — 



A typical country 'gentleman of the old school, the Rev. George Inge, of 

 Thorpe, has recently passed away at the ripe age of eighty-one. Those who 

 have frequented the sale-yard at Tattersall's at any time during the last half- 

 century, cannot fail to remember the genial face, the dignified mien, and old- 

 fashioned garb of the subject of this notice, who was one of the best judges 

 of horseflesh in England. At all Midland gatherings, and especially at the meets 

 of the Meynell and Atherstone packs, the appearance of the squire parson of 

 Thorpe was as much a matter of course as that of the M.F.H. himself. I 

 leave others to speak of him as the kindly parish priest, the good landlord, 

 the sound man of business, a friend of the poor, and confine this notice to 



