DORSET AND DEVON 107 



at the end of an hour (best pace) with hounds^ how much more 

 dehghtful would hunting be ! 



To one so devoted to hounds, horses, and everything relating to 

 hunting as myself, a visit to Mr. Templer's could not fail being a 

 treat ; and when I quitted his house, I easily accounted for the very 

 flattering character I had heard of him in the country. I have good 

 reason to think he is a first-rate sportsman ; and had it been his lot 

 to have been at the head of a regular pack of fox-hounds in a good 

 country, he would doubtless have distinguished himself as a hunts- 

 man, for his method with his hounds is remarkably good. 



Sportsmen are apt to look at a country with merely a sportsman's 

 eye, as a friend of mine did on his road to Doncaster. " What a 

 beautiful country! " said one of his fellow-travellers. "Aye," said 

 he, " 'tis a pretty country enough, but how the devil do they ride 

 over it ? " This I confess is my own case, having but little taste for 

 the picturesque. The North of Devon, then, has no charms for me, 

 who spend half my life in the saddle. The roads, with the exception 

 of a few of the principal ones, are execrably bad : you cannot break 

 out of them for more than one mile in twenty ; and if there be a 

 pretty prospect on one side or the other, you cannot see it for the 

 hedges. Some parts of the country are extremely rough and dreary; 

 and an epitome maybe found of it in a provincial saying — that " the 

 devil caught cold at Chagford, and died at East Looe." As, how- 

 ever, it generally happens in most rough countries, a great deal of 

 hospitality and good fellowship prevails in the county of Devon ; but 

 it is the only one in which I have heard a pack of hounds called 

 " a cry of dogs," or a coiv called a bullock. 



During my visit to Devonshire I could not live in the society I was 

 in without hearing some anecdotes worth remembering. The late 

 Colonel Kelly, of Kelly in the county of Devon, though a determined 

 sportsman, must have been an odd fish. Being invited one day to 

 dine at the house of a lady of high fashion in the county, he sate 

 for a long time in her presence without saying a word, and then 

 addressed her thus: — "Pray, Madam," said he, in the punctilious 

 language of the Old School, " did your Ladyship ever tail-pipe a 

 grey-hound? " — " I know not what you mean," said her Ladyship. 

 " Why, Madam," observed the Colonel, " 'tis the finest diversion in 



