MR. MICHAEL BASS, M.P. 123 



days, and was considered a great authority on hunting 

 matters. Mr. Michael Bass, the father of Lord Burton, 

 was a desperately hard rider, too, and kept it up till quite 

 late in life. He is even said to have cleared the Long 

 Lane, somewhere between Longford and Langley — a suffi- 

 ciently wide margin — lane, double hedges, and all. It is 

 a tremendous jump, and, in places, the bottom of the lane 

 must be quite thirty feet below the land on each side. 



Wishing to authenticate this story, the writer bethought 

 him of going to see James Whitely, Mr. Bass's second 

 horseman, who came to him as long ago as 1845. The 

 veteran, still hale and hearty, though in his seventy-third 

 year, was living in his own house at Stapenhill, where he 

 finds the garden, in which he delights to work, a harder 

 master than ever was the human one, whom he served so 

 well, and about whom he was nothing loth to talk. 



In the full swing of his narration, he came to a run 

 in which Mr. Bass was riding Warwick, a white horse, and 

 a wonder. " They came away," he said, " at a tremendous 

 rate from Eadburne Rough — what a lot of good runs there 

 have been from there : no place like it for good, wild foxes 

 — and ran hard Brailsford way. Mr. Bass jumped clean 

 over Long Lane, and never knew he had done it. What 

 a horse that must have been to have made such a jump, 

 and his rider never to feel as if he'd done anything extra- 

 ordinary ! Yes, some one saw him do it. I nicked along 

 the roads a bit, cutting a corner here and there, and 

 presently heard the hounds turning to me. They crossed 

 the road right in front of me, and the first man with them 

 was Mr. Meynell Ingram, without his hat. I knew by that 

 they must have been running hard, and next to him was 

 Mr. Bass, with a scar on his forehead. He'd been down. 

 I was the only second horseman there, and Mr. Bass got 

 on his second horse, the Sweep we called him, a black 

 thoroughbred one he was, and said, ' Take the old horse 

 home; he's about done for. He'll never come out again.' 

 They've got him at Rangemore now, and Coquette, 

 a rare water jumper. Yes, their pictures, I mean, of 



