HER majesty's STAG-HOUNDS. 281 



just a matter of opinion, though he certainly redeemed his 

 character by doing sixteen miles from point to point the next 

 season in the same time, and being taken at Witney, near Oxford. 

 To King succeeded Frank Goodall, a brother of the cele- 

 brated Will Goodall, of Belvoir renown, and who was himself, 

 before he became a Queen's huntsman, known and respected 

 in the Cottesmore and Billesdon country, under Mr. Tailby, 

 A fine horseman, a good judge of hounds, condition, and hunt- 

 ing — modest, civil, and obliging in his demeanour — no fitter 

 man for the post could have been found ; and I firmly believe 

 that, if the glory of the old days is gone, it is the fault of the 

 unruly masses that come out with him, and not that of Goodall 

 or his hounds. In the present day, nearly every tenth man out 

 has his favourite journal, to which he details his hunting ex- 

 periences, and gives his opinion on the sport, no matter whether 

 he knows anything concerning it or not ; for, as it is an old 

 axiom that every man thinks he knows how to drive a gig, so 

 is it equally true that every man who can sit a horse over a 

 fence thinks himself qualified to give an opinion on the merits 

 of huntsman and hounds. Unfortunately for Goodall, the 

 present age exceeds all that have gone before it in the love of 

 scribbling, and, still more unfortunately, the royal buck-hounds 

 is the pack of all others most infested with men who know 

 least about hunting. It may be taken on presumptive evidence 

 that a man fond of sport would never hunt a turned-out animal 

 if he could hunt a wild one ; hence the fact of their being 

 found at Salt Hill or Maidenhead thicket would at once have 

 stamped them, in the eyes of Warde, Conyers, Smith, or Musters, 

 as no sportsmen. I do not mean to say that all to be seen 

 there should be so classed, as many a good man tied for time 

 maybe glad of a gallop with the staggers "for his health's 

 sake ; " but I fancy he would be the last, should sport turn out 

 not exactly according to his ideas, to be continually airing his 

 grievances in public journals, and continually trying to dis- 

 parage a really good man. This the cockney element, pure and 



