SHROPSHIRE 207 



Lord Hill has not long completed Hardwicke ; but he has made 

 an excellent house of it, and turned his sword into a ploughshare. 

 In the dining-room is an excellent likeness of the Great Captain of 

 the age, and also a full-length portrait of Lord Hill, by Sir Wilham 

 Beechey. The latter is not wanting in resemblance, but there is an 

 air of fierceness in the countenance that does not belong to the 

 original. If the words of 'the Poet can be applied to any one, to 

 Lord Hill are they certainly due : — 



" In war, he's savage as the chafed tiger : 

 In peace, as gentle as th' unweaned lamb ! " 



The frost continuing. Sir Bellingham and myself proceeded on the 

 following Monday to Acton Eeynald, the seat of Mr. Andrew Corbet, 

 only son of my old friend Sir Andrew. There was a large party in 

 the house for a battue in the woods the next day, but I preferred 

 going with the Cheshire hounds, which met at Shavington, the seat 

 of that hearty old buck — that real specimen of an Irish nobleman — 

 my Lord Kilmorey, who turned out a small regiment of sportsmen 

 from under his most hospitable roof. 



This was my first appearance with the Cheshire hounds. We 

 found immediately, and lost a bad fox at the end of an hour and 

 twenty minutes — partly owing to there being two scents at first, and 

 the hounds not getting well together. Having only one horse out, 

 and having to return to Acton Eeynald to dinner — a distance of 

 nearly twenty miles — I did not wait for the second fox, neither did 

 more than a dozen out of a very large field. He shewed them, how- 

 ever, a most beautiful forty-five minutes, running in to him in the 

 open, to the great satisfaction of those who saw the thing. An 

 unfortunate circumstance, however, occurred. In crossing a large 

 sheet of water, where the ice was only partly thawed, two couples 

 of hounds got under it and were drowned ; and I was sorry to hear 

 Sir Harry Mainwaring say they were all very useful ones to the 

 pack. 



February the 1st, Sir Bellingham's hounds met at Acton Eeynald. 

 We had forty minutes, and ran to ground. We had some beautiful 

 hunting over a moor, and the scent was capital in covert. It was 

 also a particularly good day for hearing hounds ; and the music of 



