76 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



By all these, no wrinkle, tending to the better manage- 

 ment of their horses, will be despised. I shall proceed, 

 therefore, to offer them another m the shape of shoeing. 



" The Leicestershire creed this old practice outworms, 

 Lost shoes and dead beat are synonymous terms." 



In the poem of Billesdon Coplow, written by a Divine* 

 of no little celebrity in " the days of old Meynell," there 

 are many lines which have become immortal, but none 

 have found such general acceptation as the above two, 

 which have become proverbial as touching the suspicion 

 attached to the excuse of a lost shoe. However well 

 prepared you may be to brave and scorn the doubts 

 which will arise, and the surmises which will be made, 

 as to the cause of being thrown out, whenever a case of 

 " non est inventus" is made out against you, the loss 

 of a shoe is, of itself, a most mortifying occurrence to any 

 man unprovided with a second horse. In a soft grass 

 country you may not be brought to an anchor, especially 

 if you are minus only a hind-shoe, but in a plough 

 country, varied with flints, and intersected by lanes, to 

 be told by some kind friend in your rear (and some fel- 

 lows seem to have eyes made for these discoveries), that 



* If the following anecdote, relative to this reverend sportsman, has 

 before appeared in print, it is good enough, as a true story, to bear 

 repetition. Some of his brethren of tho cloth were showing him up, on 

 account of his sporting propensities, to his Diocesan, Avho was inclined to 

 wink at a few failings which " leaned to virtue's side," and was satisfied 

 with the merits of his otherwise irreproachable character. Amongst other 



enormities, th.ey represented that Mr. was actually going to ride a 



match at the county races. " Is he, indeed !" said the amiable and good- 

 humoured old Bishop — " is he, indeed ! then I will bet half-a-crown he 

 wins." 



