THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 273 



a very difficult egress from a park, over a paling beneath 

 the boughs of a tree ; with which print appear the fol- 

 lowing lines : — 



"Now, Egmont, says Assheton — now Contract, says Dick, 

 By Jove, we will sliew these damned Qaornites the trick." 



The Assheton here mentioned refers to the father 

 of my present subject, also a great professor in his day, 

 and a distinguished member of the old Pytchley Club, 

 which is all that need be here stated, as to the gene- 

 alogy of his son and heir, the present Squire of Ted- 

 worth, and which is noticed only as another instance of 

 hereditary qualities. About the period that Lord Al- 

 thorp reigned at Pytchley, Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith 

 was in the zenith of his glory at Quorn, hunting his 

 own hounds with the highest possible satisfaction to all 

 parties. Possessed of adamantine nerves, encased in a 

 frame of iron, he would, with dauntless courage, " ride 

 at anything ;" and although, in speaking of Leicester- 

 shire, he has himself since remarked, that he had a fall 

 in every field of it, he would always contrive to be, by 

 some means, on the right side of the most impracticable 

 fences, and foremost with his hounds. 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," 



18 



