HISTORY AND LITERATURE, 29 



day's sport, threw his hounds into covert : ' a fox was found 

 which gallantly faced the open, a capital run was the result, 

 which so delighted the young sportsman, that the hounds were 

 forthwith steadied from deer, and encouraged to fox.' When 

 the last Lord Berkeley kept hounds his country stretched from 

 Bristol to Wormwood Scrubs, a distance, that is, of some 120 

 miles, necessitating four separate sets of kennels ! His son, 

 Grantley Berkeley, has told us he had often heard from their 

 old huntsman how he had killed a fox where the flowers now 

 blossom in Kensington Gardens. Nor was this lord the first 

 of his name who found his sport so near London ; an earlier 

 Lord Berkeley used to kennel his hounds at Charing Cross, 

 and hunt in Gray's Inn Fields, and round about Islington. The 

 tawny liveries still worn by the Old Berkeley Hunt are a relic 

 of those days. 



Before 1750, and in many parts of the kingdom for long 

 after, every country squire no doubt kept a few couple of 

 hounds, and on occasions he and his neighbours would unite 

 their force and so form a respectable pack. These were known 

 as 'trencher hounds,' from their running loose about the place, 

 and picking up their food as they best might, and 'Nimrod' 

 supposes them to have been much of a piece with the large 

 broken-haired Welsh harriers. A day's hunting was then in all 

 probability very like that described in ' Guy Mannering,' though 

 the sportsmen were stirring at even an earlier hour than Dandie 

 Dinmont and his guest. For almost the only point on which we 

 can really afford to be certain was the desperately early hour at 

 which our fathers commenced operation, ' so soon as they could 

 distinguish a stile from a gate,' says ' Nimrod.' A famous old 

 sportsman, Mr. Lockley, a contemporary of Meynell's, used, 

 says ' Cecil,' always to begin the account of a certain wonderful 

 day's sport with, 'We breakfasted at twelve o'clock at night.' 

 Men in those days did not hunt to ride, and their greatest 

 pleasure was to watch their favourites drawing up to their game 

 on a cold scent. We know, too, that the fox was hunted then 

 as the stag is now A couple or two of steady old hounds were 



