284 Saddle and Sirloin. 



Joe Maiden over Cheshire, looks on from the stand 

 benches. Old Will Danby is the patriarch of the day, 

 and wears his 75 summers as lightly as a flower. 

 Will was at hunting for just fifty seasons, and then, 

 in his expressive words, " he lapped it up." He is 

 great in dates, and if you ask him the cause of his 

 vigorous old age, you hear that he has tasted nothing 

 stronger than raspberry vinegar for seven-and-forty 

 years. He " goes into less room" than he did, and in 

 his neat black coat and waistcoat, white cravat, and 

 drab breeches and gaiters, he looks his profession to 

 the life. " I can sleep like a man, and eat any mortal 

 thing," and " I never wore trousers in my life, and I 

 never will," is his general sketch of himself. In this 

 respect he differs from his successor in the York and 

 Ainsty, who comes to the fete in grey trousers, and 

 gets well joked about them, as he thrice walks up for 

 a prize. 



Thirteen kennels contend, but the prizes fall to 

 the lot of four, and every county save Yorkshire and 

 Linconshire is out of it. Lord Kesteven may well 

 be in a high flow of spirits, and people may well 

 wonder how he has achieved in six seasons what 

 others cannot in a lifetime. There, too, on the front 

 bench sit a bevy of fox-hunting peers Hawke, 

 Macclesfield, Middleton, and Wenlock. Sir Charles 

 Slingsby watches the brilliant fortunes -of the Nelson 

 and Comedy litter, and Mr. Thomson of " the 

 Pitchley," as Mr. Bright once called it in the House, 

 to the inextinguishable merriment of the landed 

 interest, vibrates between the front benches and the 

 horse ring. Mr. Hall of the Holderness rides up with 

 a geranium in his button-hole, and " looking as hard 

 as stub nails," on Captain Gunter's grey Crimean 

 Arab, takes his part in the fun. The hunting-field 

 has no gamer or more battered hero, but he jests at 

 his scars ; and if his horse does roll over him and 

 squeeze the breath out, his first impulse, when the 



