274 HUNTING. 



and fellow have been enshrined for all time in the strains of 

 Egerton ^Varburton. Shropshire still cherishes the memories 

 of Tom Moody (whose mythic fame, however, is by all accounts 

 very much in excess of his actual merits) and the great ' Trojan,' 

 Sir Bellingham Graham (the only master of hounds Shropshire 

 has known not native to the country), and wild Jack Mytton. 

 Yorkshire has not yet lost the memory of its two idols, Tom 

 Hodgson and Will Danby, and the breed of horse, hound, 

 and man, does its best to keep that memory green. The 

 Brocklesby, the Burton, and the Blankney, still keep up the 

 fame that Lincolnshire won in the old days of Assheton Smith 

 and 'the Squire.' A special chapter were all too short fitly to 

 commemorate the glories past and present of the Badminton 

 country. The charms of the Blackmoor Vale in his later 

 years drew Whyte- Melville away from the Shires of his earlier 

 love : indeed, he has, as it w-ere, thrown down a challenge to the 

 whole sporting world, by avowing that, were he ' sure of a fine 

 morning and a safe tuount,'' he would 'ask for no keener pleasure 

 than an hour's gallop with Lord Wolverton's bloodhounds over 

 the Blackmore Vale.' A gallop from the Blowing Stone over 

 the Wantage Vale when Treadwell held the horn of the Old 

 Berkshire will never die out of the memory of him who has been 

 fortunate even once in his life to experience it — especially if 

 he should have happened during its course to get in the way 

 of Mr. ' Tom ' Duffield. ' The Druid ' has declared that the 

 spring huntmg in the New Forest is ' charming beyond de- 

 scription ; ' though his love of the picturesque, at least as much 

 as of riding to hounds, seems to have played its part in his 

 rapture. By the light of the ' Stars of the West ' a man may 

 still see to enjoy his favourite sport, when the fun of falling 

 has began to pall, and big fences wax bigger with a waning 

 sight.' And so we might go on for ever and ever, hunting 

 by the 'moonlight of memory,' as the Duke of Rutland's 

 hounds will hunt so long as there is any light in the sky for 



1 See A New Book of Sports (Bentley, 1885) for a capital description of a 

 day's fox hunting on Dartmoor. 



