•282 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



boatswain call out " fZ — n your eyes, doivse the glim," the light was 

 out in an instant. Mr. Lambton, however, does not swear, but 

 gives them something a \\ii\e i)iquant. 



Mr. Lambton rides very clever horses, and gets well over a 

 country, particularly so for his age ; for although Time has laid 

 his hand gently upon him, a few more years will bring him to- 

 wards the grand climacteric, and this slackens the pace of the best 

 of men. 



It has been contended that servants, as huntsmen, must always 

 excel gentlemen hunting their own hounds ; but why should this be ? 

 If hunting hounds be a science (and who will dispute that point?), 

 why should not the education and theory of the gentleman, when 

 combined with his professional practice, give him the superiority, 

 instead of having a contrary effect ? I am here alluding to a com- 

 parison that has been drawn between Mr. Musters and Tom 

 Sebright, each very great in the art ; but barring kennel manage- 

 ment, in which gentlemen huntsmen cannot be expected to equal 

 servants who are hired in great measure for that purpose, and for a 

 great part of their time have little else to do, I confess I can only 

 see one point on which my argument is at all likely to give way. 

 The servant huntsman generally goes through the regular gradations 

 of second and first whipper-in ; and although I have heard it 

 asserted that a whipper-in seldom makes a good huntsman, 

 experience gives the lie to that — most of our first-rate huntsmen 

 have served that office : whereas now and then a gentleman puts a 

 horn to his saddle, and assumes the command all at once, which 

 has given to some of them the various titles of professors, heaven- 

 born huntsmen, &c. Now I conceive Mr. Musters's education has 

 been nearly equal to that of any huntsman alive. His father kept 

 fox-hounds upwards of thirty years, hunting parts of Nottinghamshire 

 and Lincolnshire ; and I have been told by those who remembered 

 it well, that, for fourteen or fifteen of those years, (i.e. from the time 

 he could bestride his pony till his father gave up the hounds,) his 

 son Jack acted as whipper-in whenever occasion required. I have 

 also heard from very good authority, that when Sir Henry Harpur 

 purchased the late Mr. Musters's hounds, and the noted Shaio 

 began to hunt them, he has been heard to declare that he frequently 



