THE SQUIRE OF ASWARBY 



spoken, and I must draw now to the close of the happy and 

 beautiful life, which came so quickly and so suddenly one 

 bright May morning, in 1859. 



In his recollections of Goodall, the Druid tells us how, in 

 the Exhibition year, he started to see the great show of 

 which every one was talking, but he visited sixteen kennels 

 of hounds and never got to the Crystal Palace at all. He 

 had a great love of his beautiful little home at Belvoir, and 

 of those sturdy boys of his with whom he loved to play 

 cricket, although he confessed that anxiety as to their future 

 was such that it would make him " sweat in an ice house." 

 He watched, too, with great interest his colony of bees. His 

 diary, like his letters, is full of character, as the Druid, a 

 friendly soul who loved the kindly Will, and whose reminis- 

 cences of Goodall have an accent of regretful tenderness, 

 points out : — 



" His phraseology was very unique and expressive ; and 

 ' screamed over the fallows,' ' raced into him and eat him,' 

 ' a blazing hour,' ' blew him up in the open,' etc., were great 

 expressions with him, and very characteristic of the ceaseless 

 energy of the man." 



His diary, which will, we trust, be printed, is a very remark- 

 able work — quite as much for the little comments on man, 

 horse, and hound throughout it as for its vivid description of 

 the sport itself. Passing events are interspersed here and 

 there. We find the death of " my much-respected friend 

 John Ashbourn " chronicled near Mr. Assheton Smith's ; and 

 the marriage of a first-flight Meltonian is not forgotten. He 

 never failed to see what every hound was doing, and at night 

 a little cross was put above each of their names for every 

 good hit they had made. When it was something out of the 

 common they had a note as well. For instance, " Lucy made 

 a famous hit at Wilsford, and won her fox " ; " Bell showed 

 great superiority of nose, and caught the fox." Wishful, 

 however, catches it herself in a widely different sense from 

 his pen that self-same season, and we find against her in 

 black and white that she " and Willing behaved very ill, run- 

 ning hare most obstinately in Easton Wood." There is also 



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