MR. WARD'S HOUNDS 91 



The following circumstance, also for the honour of fox-hunting, 

 ought not to be lost to the sporting world. — A medical gentleman, 

 by the name of Hemsted, residing near Newbury, ordered his 

 gardener to set a trap for some vermin that infested his garden. As 

 ill luck would have it, a fox was found in it in the morning with 

 his leg broken. On being taken to the doctor, he exclaimed, 

 "why did you not call me up in the night, that I might have 

 set the leg?" He did set the leg however, and the fox is 

 quite recovered, and Mr. Ward told me he expected him at the 

 kennel every day for the purpose of being turned out upon some 

 earths. 



I saw a great many good horses in the Craven Hunt, and some 

 looking pretty fit to go. Amongst them was one prodigy ; and it is 

 "froiiti nulla fides " with her. This was a little black mare, not fourteen 

 hands high, got by a cart horse out of a thorough-bred mare, the 

 property of Mr. John Sloper, of Woodhay, who has ridden her nine 

 seasons. His weight on her back is about eleven stone ; but no 

 fence is too high or too wide for her, neither is any day too hard for 

 her. She has great length of frame on a very large set of limbs ; 

 and, in the language of the huntsman who was describing the action 

 of his favorite old mare, she " goes like oil." 



Among the horses I met with in this country I recognized an old 

 acquaintance in Mr. Wroughton's Doctor, once the property of Sir 

 Bellingham Graham, and ridden by his servants. This was one of 

 the most restive horses that ever went into a field, and it is not 

 long since that I was speaking to Christopher Atkins (who now 

 hunts the Union hounds) of the trouble he had in making him into 

 a hunter ; but when once made he was a good one. An old woman 

 might ride him now. Mr. Wroughton is always well mounted, and 

 gets well to hounds ; and I was sorry to hear that he lost three very 

 valuable hunters some time since by some bad management in his 

 stable. 



There were two other friends of Mr. Ward on a visit to him when 

 I was at Hungerford — one of them a sportsman of very fair promise, 

 and well known in the grass countries. His name is Lambert — a 

 " Man of Kent." He is a particularly good horseman. 



It is not my practice to introduce the ladies, but I must take 



