THE SHIRES. 217 



go often into Northamptonshire. The distinction is really one 

 of fashion, not of geography. By the Shires is meant the 

 country hunted over by the following packs of hounds — the 

 Belvoir, the Cottesmore, the Quorn, including Sir Bache 

 Cunard's, and the Pytchley. So some unwritten law, dating 

 from what era we know not, has ordained. 



Let us take the Belvoir first, a position it is well entitled 

 to, from the excellence and variety of its country, the excellence 

 and uniformity of its hounds, its antiquity, and the grand style 

 in which things have always been done within its precincts. 

 The kennel books of the Belvoir hounds stretch back to 1756. 

 Like all the historic packs the stag was their earliest chase. 

 The foxhounds were established in the days of the third Duke 

 of Rutland who died in 1779, ^t the patriarchal age of eighty- 

 three. The Marquis of Granby, whose jolly face and big bald 

 head once English inns knew well, and the Frenchmen also, 

 much to their disgust, on the day of Warburg,' seems to have 

 been the first master. The fourth Duke died when his son 

 was but a lad of nine, and during his minority the hounds, 

 which were made up by his guardian and uncle, Henry, fifth 

 Duke of Beaufort, from the Badminton kennels, were managed 

 by a committee under the direction of Sir Carnaby Haggerston. 

 In 1 83 1 Lord Forester held the reins, and kept hold of them 

 till the present duke came to the title in 1857.'^ There are no 

 such beautiful hounds, men say, in England, certainly none of 

 such pure and direct pedigree. ' Their beautiful uniformity 

 of colouring, their high class, and their wonderful evenness in 

 appearance are quite unapproached elsewhere. It might be 

 thought that these qualities could not have been brought to such 

 a pitch of excellence without sacrifice of other more practical 

 attributes, did we not know that nearly a century and a half 

 has been reaching this standard, and that each year as many 

 as fifty couple of puppies (occasionally even more) are sent 

 out to walk. With such a choice of new material there can be 



1 See Carlyle's Frederick the Great, book xx. ch. ii. 

 - Cecil's Records of the Chase, ch. ii. 



