THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 259 



his mare is of equally diminutive size ; nevertheless, there 

 not only is not a man in the Atherstone Hunt that can 

 beat the tanner on his good little mare, but, strange to 

 say, he has gone out two or three times with the Quorn 

 hounds, in their strongest country, and been amongst the 

 foremost men in the field. In fact, so annoyed was one 

 celebrated character in that hunt, at the presence of the 

 tanner and his mare, following him as though they had 

 been his shadow, and over every description of fence, 

 that he was at length heard to exclaim, ' Xow I'll break 



his d d neck.' But the neck of the tanner was 



spared, perhaps, by a fortunate occurrence. The cele- 

 brated character I allude to, mounted, perhaps, on one 

 of the best horses in Leicestershire, rode at some timber, 

 a foot or more higher than the little mare's back ; but, 

 breaking the topmost rail, the tanner and his mare 

 followed him. But his history does not rest here. Being 

 invariably clad in a light green jacket, he has obtained 

 the sobriquet of the Paroqueet, to which his flying 

 propensities for no man goes faster after hounds, or 

 gets over higher fences have sufficiently established his 

 title. At all events, he is a gallant little fellow, and 

 his good little mare may well be said to be nearly worth 

 her weight in gold. 



" To describe a run with hounds is so difficult a task 

 at least, when justice is to be done to the subject that I 

 am almost afraid to attempt it ; nevertheless, I cannot 

 resist giving you a short account of one we had last week, 

 attended with some peculiarly interesting circumstances. 

 In the first place, I must tell you, that the uniform 

 colour if I may so express myself of the Atherstone 

 Hunt is orange, whereas, you know, that the Quorn men 

 all ride in scarlet. Xext, it being known that a number 

 of the Quornites, as Dick Knight called them, had 

 signified their intention of being out with Lord Yemen's 

 hounds, on Tuesday last, at Bosworth, a report had gone 

 abroad, that, should a good fox be found, there would 

 be a sort of contest for the brush more properly speak- 

 ing, for superiority of horsemanship and nerve between 

 the men in orange and the men in red. This actually 

 took place ; but, my good fellow, Hargrave, how can I 

 find words that will convey to you even a faint descrip- 

 tion of the interesting scene ? An epicure cannot judge 

 of a dish of meat by the palate of another ; a musician 



