170 NTMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



Perhaps the following may be termed a chef-d'oeuvre. He had 

 made a match to kill with pistol and ball twenty swallows on the 

 wing in one day, and he icon his match ! 



Now, most foi'tunately for society. Captain Eoss is a particularly 

 fine-tempered young man ; for, at the customary duelling distance, 

 he must be nothing less than a second Marcellus."'' " Where would 

 you like to have it, Sir," he might say; "would somewhere about 

 the fifth button suit you ? " f As for myself, that I should 

 ever fight a duel with Captain Eoss is almost as unlikely as the 

 coming of the second Shiloh ; but if I were (which God forbid!), 

 I should act thus : I should toss up for first fire ; and if I lost it, I 

 should know how to act, and be prepared for the worst. I should 

 send for an undertaker, give directions for my funeral, fix upon the 

 spot for my bones to repose in, and, in humble imitation of the 

 immortal Virgil, I would write my own epitaph for my tomb : 



To Captain Ross I lost the toss, 



So here interred I lie ; 

 Reader, take care, of him beware — 



7/ he shoots first you die. 



There was a gentleman at Melton, of whose performance over a 

 country I heard a great deal when in Surrey, but I had never seen 

 him in the field — I mean Captain Standon of the Guards. His stud 

 was in Dublin, where he is at present quartered ; but I saw him go 

 very well one day with his own spurs and another man's horse (Mr. 

 Maher's), and I understand he has been shewing the Irishmen in 

 their own country how to leap walls and swim rivers — though one 

 attempt at the Liffey nearly cost him his life. 



I was glad to see Sir Watkin Williams Wynn once more in 

 Leicestershire. Like another Demosthenes, he shews us at once, 

 that, where Nature gives the bias, all difficulties are to be overcome ; 

 and that eighteen stone, at the age of fifty, is no obstacle to going 

 a good 2Mce over a country after fox-hounds. Sir Watkin is a good 

 horseman, and has one property which cannot be too closely imitated 

 by all heavy weights, as indeed by light ones also : I have seen a 



* Marcellns always killed his man. 



"j" " Pray now, how would you receive the Gentleman's shot?" — Sir Lucius 

 0' Trigger. 



