238 TjiE Book of the Horse. 



that "to see sporting dogs hunt gives me the greatest pleasure in the world." From his 

 earliest to his latest days he never went on wheels when the saddle would serve him. 



In 1806, being then only 24 years of age and a Lord of the Treasury, he used to have hacks 

 posted on the road from London to Althorpe (78 miles), at about ten miles apart ; he built 

 a rough stable where there was no roadside inn. As soon as the House of Commons rose, 

 he mounted and rode down, all night if needful, to hunt with the Pytchley the next morning. 

 Thirty years later his tastes were still the same ; the American Charles Sumner, met him at 

 Wentworth House, Earl Fitzwilliam's, and was surprised to find him on a rainy day in boots 

 and breeches at breakfast preparing to ride twenty-five miles before dinner to see a gaol at 

 Mansfield. 



Lord Althorpe was not the only gentleman of high degree who wore top-boots and breeches 

 in London in 1834. Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Charles Knightley, and other landed squires 

 of ancient pedigree, still adhered to the costume which was the height of fashion in the 

 days when the Prince of Wales, Charles James Fox, and Brinsley Sheridan, were friends and 

 allies, and which was the costume which county M.F's. were accustomed to wear when they 

 took up any special county address to King George HL 



While county gentlemen still adhered to top-boots and cord or leather breeches, there 

 used to gather every afternoon of the season (noonday rides had not been established, and 

 the City had not conquered and colonised Tyburnia) a group of horsemen under the shadow 

 of the Achilles — a group of a tribe long since extinguished by real wars and the taste for 

 athletic sports, the successors of Beau Bnunmell, an affected school of dandies, curled, 

 perfumed, silked, and satined. 



Three were remarkable, caught the eye and dwelt in the memory of every " young man 

 from the country" who had read " Pelham," and saw them for the first time. The Antinous, 

 Count D'Orsay, the Count Mirabel of Lord Beaconsfield's novel, the Alcibiades of that 

 age, resplendent in a costume which Maclise has handed down to posterity in his portrait 

 of young Charles Dickens (a costume absurd to modern swells), which Charles Sheridan has 

 celebrated in his " Chaunt of Achilles " — 



" Patting the crest of his well-managed steed, 

 A coat of chocolate, a vest of snow, 

 Well brushed his whiskers and his boots below ; 

 A short-napped beaver prodigal of brim, 

 With trowsers tightened to a well-turned limb." 



Alongside him was his copy, white-cuffed, primrose-gloved, save that the profuse curls 

 were golden instead of raven-black, his features anything but Grecian, and his horse a flea- 

 bitten grey. From time to time, in reply to the salutes of many pretty hands, he raised a hat 

 of a shape now consigned to perfumers and dancing-masters with a grace his ancestor, Earl 

 Chesterfield (of the " Letters "), would have approved and admired. The third of the party 

 was Lord Sefton, almost old enough to be the father of the other two, almost humpbacked, 

 the "cod's head and shoulders" of the caricaturist, perfectly dressed, admirably mounted on 

 a stolid hack — the Ulysses of the Whig party and the world of fashion, famed for his political 

 zeal, his mordant tongue, his skill as a coachman, his dinners, and the sumptuous example he 

 had set when Master of the Ouorn hounds.* 



• Charles GreviUe, describing Lord Sefton's cheer wlicn the majority on the tliird reading of the first Irish Reform liill 

 was announced breaks unconsciously into verse — 



» "And Sclton's yell was heard amidst the din." 



