THE QUORN 153 



the Almighty adorns merely for the sake of ornament, would be 

 either to suppose that he amused himself with an ostentation of his 

 powers, or to put him on a level with man ; whereas in the animal 

 w^orld, the jvistness and elegance of the figure — to say nothing of the 

 colours in which it is arrayed — confer upon them the qualities we 

 require, and are necessary to the very ends of their creation ; for to 

 them are they (hounds in particular) indebted for strength, agility, 

 and speed. " "What," says a certain writer, " is beauty, but a 

 necessary result of the aptitude of forms to the offices for which they 

 were designed ? " 



Had the Quorn hounds been hunting the Duke of Beaufort's hills 

 this season, instead of their own country, appearances would have 

 been much in their favour; but looking at them as a kennel of hounds, 

 hunting such a country as Leicestershire, ridden after by such fields of 

 horsemen, draggled through such roads as they travel, and worked 

 as they are worked — a man must come prepared to find fault, if he 

 do not turn his back upon them, and exclaim, " these are the sort of 

 animals that the Quorn country requires ! " All of them are made 

 for speed. Some may have lost it fi'om one cause, and some from 

 others ; but every hound in the pack was formed by nature to go 

 fast, and also formed for strength. As for the entry, when I say I 

 never saw so fine a one, I mean to imply — first, that I never saw so 

 large a one in any one man's kennel ; and secondly, that better 

 judges than myself, who saw them on that day, pronounced them to 

 be, with one or two exceptions, as level a lot of hounds, and as w^ell 

 calculated for the country they are intended for, as were ever seen 

 in one kennel. 



When w^e look a little back to the parent stock of the Quorn 

 hounds, we have a good right to expect that which is clever. They 

 have been picked from the late Lord Monson's (the celebrated black 

 and tan sort), the old Pytchley, and Lord Vernon's well-known 

 packs, and no expense or trouble has been spared in crossing them 

 with other blood. 



I never saw th-e Goodwood kennels — said to be the finest in 

 England, and reported to have cost nineteen thousand pounds — but 

 the finest I ever saw are those at Quorn. The stable in which the 

 hunters are kept (stated to be 300 feet in length) has stalls for thirty 



