THOMAS ASSHETON SMITH. 185 



bury Plain, when all at once his liorse came on a treacherous flat, 

 greasy at top, as sportsmen say, but hard and slippery underneath. 

 The horse he rode was a hard puller, and very violent, named 

 Piccadilly ; ftnd the least check from the bridle, when the animal 

 began to blunder, would have to a certainty made him slip up. 

 Here the fine riding of the squire shone conspicuously. He left 

 his horse entirely alone, as if he were swimming ; and after floun- 

 dering about and swerving for at least a hundred yards, Piccadilly 

 recovered himself, and went on as if nothing had happened." 



" At the end of a desperate run, he once charged the river Wel- 

 land, which divides the counties of Leicester, Northampton, and 

 Rutland, and is said to be altogether impracticable. The knack he 

 had of getting across water is to be attributed to his resolute way of 

 riding to hounds, by which his horses knew that it was in vain to 

 refuse whatever he might put them at." 



One day when Smith was drawing for a fox on his 

 famous horse Fire-King, he came to a precipitous bank at 

 the end of a meadow, with a formidable drop into a hard 

 road. " You cant get out there, Sir,'' said a civil farmer. 

 "/ should like very much to see the place where we" 

 (patting Fire-King) " cannot go,'' w^as the reply, as down 

 he rode, to the astonishment of the field. 



*' In falling," says Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "he always contrived 

 to fall clear of his horse. The bridle-rein, which fell as lightly as 

 breeze of zephyr on his horse's neck, was then held as in a vice. 

 In some instances, with horses whom he knew well, he would ride 

 for a fall, where he knew it was not possible for him to clear a fence. 

 With Jack-o'-Lantern he was often known to venture on this 

 experiment, and he frequently said there was not a field in Leices- 

 tershire in which he had not had a fall. ' I never see you in the 

 Harborough country,' he observed to a gentleman who occasionally 

 hunted with the Quorn. 'I don't much like your Harborough 



