REMINISCENCES OF A IIUNTSIMAN. 89 



deuce of their favourite airs, while they cast side-long 

 glances at Brougham, as if they thought — 



" There was a laualiing devil in his sneer, 

 That raised emotions both of rage and fear." 



In the end, Lord Tenterden summed up with great 

 partiality for the complainant's case, for which, soon 

 after, I most religiously caricatured him in my album 

 or sketch-book ; and the jury gave, if I remember 

 rightly, a sum above that at which the damage was 

 laid, amounting to a hundred pounds. 



These, and such persecutions and prosecutions as 

 these, with the increase of cultivation and building 

 — railways had not then begun — made it very evi- 

 dent to me that, if I kept hounds, it must no longer 

 be in my father's country. I had held it as long as 

 a man could hold it under the influence of old asso- 

 ciations, and I felt convinced that the thing, as far as 

 comfort went, was at an end. It takes a man some 

 time to break through old associations, and to leave 

 the vicinity of long-known friends, and it went to my 

 heart to quit Cranford ; however, having for some 

 time become what the world calls " settled in life," — 

 it's a funny term, and not always an apt one, for my 

 observation goes to show that marriage more fre- 

 quently unsettles than settles, a not very unlikely 

 fact when two opinions rule instead of one, — having 

 become settled, as the saying is, and not so fond of 

 balls and parties as I used to be, though still very 

 fond of society, I came to the determination of keep- 

 ing foxhounds ; the further from London, and the 

 wilder the country, the better. Xo country at first 

 offered, but one day, in London, in conversation with 

 Lord Clan^Yilliam, he told me that the present Duke 



