THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 357 



perience than himself most of the arts and appliances 

 which render life agreeable to a man in his twenty-fifth 

 year, were to be found in his house at Melton. 



But we have said nothing of his stud of hunters, selected 

 for this occasion. By the advice of his friend Somerby, 

 whom he had met in London during the season, an 

 alteration had been effected in them. 



"The eight hunters you now have," said Somerby, 

 " are all good and useful of their kind ; but three of them 

 are not suited for Leicestershire. In the first place, they 

 are not well enough bred for our pace and country ; and, 

 in the next, in stable language, they are deficient in scale 

 to command and to cover our large blackthorn hedges, 

 with their wide ditches, and more especially the ox fences, 

 which require horses to extend themselves in their leaps 

 over a great space of ground. Let me recommend you 

 to draft all but those three ; and as there are two lots of 

 well-known and capital Leicestershire horses coming to 

 Tattersall's in a fortnight, you can then and there re- 

 place them, as well as complete the number of your stud. 

 Do not think me conceited in thus characterizing the 

 Leicestershire horse ; depend upon it, before you have 

 hunted in that country half as long as I have, you will 

 say I have not overdrawn the picture." 



Space will not admit of our accompanying our hero 

 during the whole of his residence at Melton, which 

 continued for nine consecutive years, and where he left 

 behind him a reputation for all that is desirable in the 

 gentleman, the companion, and the sportsman ; and the 

 character he gave of it when he quitted it was, that, " to 

 a sportsman it was the most delightful place upon earth ; 

 the very centre and rendezvous of all pleasures, and 

 whatsoever is agreeable to mortals in truth, to him, an 

 earthly paradise." There was, in fact, but one circum- 

 stance during the entire period of his sojourning there, 

 that produced an unpleasing reflection, but from the 

 relation of it here some good may arise. An unguarded 

 expression from a hot-headed young Irishman, but 

 possessing an equally warm heart the result, perhaps, 

 of an extra bottle of claret, and that the result of a 

 brilliant run in the morning, which, in those days, was 

 too often celebrated with Bacchanalian rites in the evening 

 interrupted the harmony of a party at which our hero 

 made one ; and, as was likewise too often the custom of 



