78 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



in, and whose breed of hounds has mingled with, all the best 

 kennels in England — who, as a convivial companion, or a real 

 specimen of old English blood, has seldom been equalled, and never 

 excelled — whose name in the sporting world will live, till " time 

 shall throw a dart at death." 



From what I had heard of Mr. Ward's hounds, I was prepared to 

 find them larger than they are. I had heard them compared to 

 mastiffs fit to guard a tanner's yard ; to calves two months old ; to 

 poneys fit to carry children over a country; but I found them, with 

 few exceptions, little larger than many packs 1 have hunted with ; 

 and, if fed to run, they would appear but little above the Duke of 

 Beaufort's standard. Such hounds as Solomon, Somerset, General, 

 and two or three others, are certainly rarely to be met with, and 

 from their uncommon height — at least twenty-seven inches — are 

 eye-sores to the rest of the pack with those w^ho insist on seeing 

 hounds sizeable ; but the generality of the bitches are above all 

 praise — combining great power with the symmetry and high breed- 

 ing of a fox-hound. For my own part, I am partial to full-sized 

 fox-hounds ; and for nineteen countries out of twenty they are the 

 best. A little hound will go well in some countries : a large hound, 

 if fed to go, will go well in all. 



On conversing with a gentleman who was out, on the appearance 

 of Mr. "Ward's hounds, he told me there was one called Sovereign, 

 for which Mr. W. has often declared he would not take 150 

 guineas : he was a light-coloured hound, with a spot on his side. 

 Observing, very soon afterwards, a yellow-pied hound answering 

 this description, very near to the huntsman, in the covert, I asked 

 him whether it were not Sovereign ? when he told me it was ; and 

 the words had scarcely dropped from his lips, when putting his 

 nose to the ground on a bare pad-way, and throwing his tongue to 

 a scent. Sovereign ran up to his fox, and found him in less than a 

 minute, and never quitted him till he was killed, at the end of two 

 hours' cold hunting. Well may Mr. Ward be proud of such a 

 hound as Sovereign ! I understand he is got by his famous 

 Centinel, with some of his old Statesman blood in him, with a cross 

 from Sir Thomas Mostyn's Lady. Mr. Harvey Combe, and his 

 huntsman Henr}^ Oldaker, were out, and were much pleased with 



