174 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



SO that a very small portion, if any, really remained totally un- 

 hunted ; but this no more constituted the Tedworth country 

 than the Saxon Heptarchy constituted the kingdom of Great 

 Britain and Ireland. ]N"ow, looking back at what it must have 

 been when Mr. Smith first got a few draft hounds together at 

 Penton Lodge and commenced fox-hunting, it is only with sur- 

 prise that any one can realize the idea of a man with means to 

 pitch his tent in any one of the best counties of England should 

 have undertaken to hunt what is certainly one of the worst. 

 Look to the north-east, and what was the prospect 1 The huge 

 woodlands of Doles and Doyly, forests, you might almost call 

 them, without ridings to give a huntsman the chance of getting 

 to his hounds, Or forcing a fox to fly ; a little more westward 

 was another stronghold in Collingbourne Woods, equally dis- 

 advantageous ; eastward was Wherwell Wood, a covert which, 

 from its immense size, has gone begging ever since Mr. Smith's 

 death ; and to the south a chain of woodlands from Clarendon 

 Park to Mottesfont — black, dark, and dreary, wet, sticky, and 

 full of bogs and sloughs. Add to this the Alpine country round 

 Conholt Park, Ham Ashley, and Fosberry Wood, and you have 

 a picture the most energetic fox-hunter would shrink from. 

 There was one bit of blue in the horizon, which was the beau- 

 tiful expanse of Salisbury Plain, with its wide stretch of maiden 

 turf, forming the central portions of the hunt, and the nice bit 

 of vale round South Grove. The squire of Tedworth was, how- 

 ever, not a man to be turned away from his purpose by greater 

 difficulties than these — even the refusal of his father to allow 

 him to draw Ashton Coppice (the home covert) amongst them — 

 and, having spent his youth amongst the fascinations of the 

 Midlands, he was determined that he would transform this wild 

 district into a fox-hunting country, spend his income amongst 

 his own tenants instead of strangers — a resolve that all country 

 gentlemen would do well to imitate. That the squire did not 

 come here because he had no longer the nerve to ride in better 

 countries is shown not only by the way he was still able to go 



