GO REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



end. The Lours I kept not according with those of 

 my mother, it suited me well to live at the inn, and 

 a very jolly life it was. Alas ! for those Hampton 

 Court scenes that have vanished. Alas ! for the thou- 

 sand happy remembrances associated with that vicinity 

 — the wilderness, the gardens, and the merry old Toy 

 Inn, where the periodical and public balls used to be 

 held, and I heard and saw what nothing can ever 

 bring back again. One of the things I heard and 

 saw I could have dispensed with. The bar, where 

 old Saunders, with his respectable old white head, 

 used to sit with his niece, had a glass roof, on to 

 which some of the rooms above stairs looked. One 

 night there was a roaring party above, and I was 

 sitting for a moment, ere I went to my room to bed, 

 talking to the old inan. Crash went the roof of glass, 

 and down came a cold fowl, the shortest way, I sup- 

 pose, to the " safe ;" and in a moment a lobster salad, 

 a cold round of beef, empty bottles, and the contents 

 of dishes, followed each other incessantly through 

 the glass roof, driving us into corners, old Saunders 

 with a pencil clapping down damage in inflammatory 

 figures. I forget the sum " that the party up stairs," 

 as Tom, the best waiter in the world, called them, 

 had to pay for their after- supper frolic. 



My hounds hunted twice a week; and the night 

 before meeting, when the fixture was near Cranford 

 Bridge, every stall in the inn and village was full, 

 and some one or other of my friends came down to 

 me over night. On one occasion, every stall at the inn 

 having been full, the fixture being Cranford Brido-e, 

 we had just commenced a run with a middling scent, 

 when, at the first check, a gentleman, Mr. Mercer, I 

 believe, rode up to another not badly dressed sports- 



