1 80 FOX-HOUNDS. 



of long-wooUed Lincoln sheep ; there, stubble yieldmg 

 before from a dozen to a score of pair-horse ploughs, 

 silent witnesses of the scale of Lincolnshire farming — • 

 at length we see descending and winding along a bridle- 

 road before us, the pied pack and the gleam of the 

 huntsman's scarlet. Around, from every point of the 

 compass the " field " come ambling, trotting, cantering, 

 galloping, on hacks, on hunters, through gates or over 

 fences, practising their Yorkshire four-year-olds. There 

 are squires of every degree, Lincolnshire M.P.'s, par- 

 sons in black, in number beyond average ; tenant- 

 farmers, in quantity and quality such as no other county 

 we have ever seen can boast, velvet-capped and scarlet- 

 coated, many with the Brocklesby hunt button, mounted 

 on first-class hunters, whom it was a pleasure to see 

 them handle; and these were not young bloods, out- 

 running the constable, astonishing their landlords and 

 alarming their fathers ; but amongst the ruck were 

 respectable grandfathers who had begun hunting on 

 ponies when Stubbs was painting great-grandfather 

 Smith, and who had as a matter of course brought up 

 their sons to follow the line in which they had been 

 cheered on by Arthur Young's Lord Yarborough. There 

 they were, of all ages, from the white-haired veteran who 

 could tell you when every field had been inclosed, to the 

 little petticoated orphan boy on a pony, " whose father's 

 farm had been put in trust for liim by the good Earl." 



Of the ordinary mob that crowd fox-hound meets 

 from great cities and fashionable watering-places,, there 

 Avere none. The swell who comes out to show his 

 clothes and his horse; the nondescript, who may be 

 a fast Life- Guards man or a fishmonger ; the lot of 

 horse-dealers ; and, above all, those blase gentlemen 

 who, bored with everything, openly express their pre- 



