SURREY 61 



conclude thex'e is some subscription towards them ; but from whom, 

 or to what amount, I did not make it my business to inquire. All 

 that I can add is, that, to please my eye, they are very complete 

 indeed, and from the pains that have been taken with them they 

 ought to be so. 



Unless a man be an enthusiast in the sport, he never makes a 

 good huntsman ; but this is one of Eoffey's perfections. Not content 

 with the fine season's sport his hounds have had, he sometimes 

 sticks an additional feather in their caps. A very good sportsman — 

 a constant attendant on his hounds — overheard him one day describ- 

 ing a run to a gentleman from London, who had been lamenting that 

 he was not out to see it. He not only went over all the country the 

 fox had taken, but all that had been drawn over in the morning, 

 making pretty nearly a tithe of the county of Surrey. " Why, 

 Eoffey," said the person who heard him, "how could you cravi that 

 gentleman so about the run on Wednesday?" — "God help him. 

 Sir ! " replied Eoifey, " I thought I might as well tell the gentleman 

 that as anything else." The last time I saw Eoffey, I was very 

 much pleased with the manner in which he accosted me, as I passed 

 his door on my hack. " Oh, Sir ! " said he, " you should have been 

 with us on Saturday : we had an hour and twenty minutes ivithout a 

 cast, and killed him ! ! " 



Eoffey is a man of much humour, and when he speaks of me he 

 always calls me " the bookman." The Colonel told me, he came 

 up to him one day, and informed him " the bookman " was out. He 

 was, however, very civil to me, and very obliging in answering any 

 questions I asked him. I call him a very good one over a country — 

 though he must ride nearly fifteen stone, and one of the best to make 

 his way through a strong covert that I ever met w4th in my life. 

 Trees of twenty years' growth have no chance with him at all. His 

 general appearance, also, is in his favour. With a good badgei'-pie 

 complexion, he has a keen eye in his head, strongly expressive of a 

 mind only waiting to be cultivated. 



I must confess that nothing pleases me more than the genuine, 

 unsophisticated remarks of persons of this description — the result 

 of practical observation alone, where Nature has been the school- 

 master, and where books and the dreams of the Schools have formed 



