292 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



some means, on the right side of the most impracticable, 

 fences, and foremost with his homids. The well-known 

 story of his charging the river, together with anything 

 like a narrative of his feats by flood and field, would 

 alone fill a volume ; it is more to my purpose to remark 

 what I have learned from his contemporaries, that even 

 in the hey-day of his youth,— 



" In his hot blood, when George the Third was king," 



he was an instance of the very rare union of coolness 

 and consummate skill as a huntsman, combined with 

 the impetuosity of so desperate a rider ; and not only 

 was he the most determined of all riders, but equally 

 remarkable as a horseman.* His practice as a hunts- 

 man was, that which is best to be followed in any, but 

 more especially in a good country, that of leaving 

 hounds very much to themselves, although ever on the 

 spot to render assistance if required ; but I shall be 

 running riot, or taking heel-way too far back from Ted- 

 worth, if I do not hold hard and pull up altogether in 

 this retrospective digression. I can add nothing to the 

 fame of him, of whom it has been remarked by a far 

 abler pen, that " amidst the multitude of Smiths, there 



* I can never forget a remark wliicli I heard in my boyhood, addressed by 

 a veteran to a youthful debutant, who was advocating the use of head gear, in 

 the shape of caresson, &c., for the control of a fractious horse, " Keep your 

 hands down. Tom Smith tvould skew you, that the left hand is the best mar- 

 tingal." 



