52 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



favourite horse, he will sail away as triumphantly 

 as ever, but his nerves are not proof against the clan- 

 gers that a long experience has shown him sometimes 

 attend the most able horsemen and horses. When I 

 say dangers, it is not that the man shrinks from en- 

 countering any danger, but it is rather allied to the 

 sensation engendered by the shower-bath overhead : — 

 you can't make up your mind to pull the string. In 

 the whole course of my experience, I never saw nerves 

 last so long as those of my brother. Admiral Berkeley. 

 I am told that Mr. Ashton Smith's nerves never fail 

 him, and all the world knows what a first-rate man 

 he has been over a country ; but then he lived to 

 ride, and, I believe, almost dieted himself for it, 

 whereas my brother. Admiral Berkeley, always liked 

 his bottle or more of wine, and never gave his nerves 

 a thought. The state of the stomach, or the amount 

 of wine over-night, has usually a vast deal to do with 

 it. For myself, my life has ever been a most regular 

 one, never having been overtaken in liquor, as the 

 saying is, although, when I joined the Coldstream 

 Guards, I had plenty of thirsty examples before me. 

 The sight of the fool a drunken man makes of him- 

 self, and the secrets he lets out, made me, at the age 

 of sixteen, resolve never to place myself in that po- 

 sition, and nothino; has ever shaken that determi- 

 nation. I like a glass of wine ; but a bottle, when I 

 am alone, would last me three days, though it is in 

 my power to drink any quantity, and yet retain 

 my senses. More than once in my life it has been 

 my unpleasing lot to be shut up for a night with a 

 host of fellows who seemed to me to have resolved 

 not to rise from the table with their wits about them, 

 and 1 was obliged to drink for want of something else 



