30S COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



never been able to learn ; most probably two or three influential 

 persons were connected with them. 



Nothing definite is recorded until Mr. John Saxby, of 

 North End, took the mastership many years ago, and the 

 hounds were kennelled at Iford ; but from that date they have 

 always classed as one of the most celebrated, and perhaps I 

 may say the hest-knoum pack of harriers in England. I think 

 also that no other pack has had the same number of characters 

 well-known in the hunting world at its meets as might from that 

 period have been seen with the Brookside. In Mr. John Saxby 

 they fell into the hands of one of those sportsmen who, as a 

 class, are unhappily fast dying out from amongst us — one who 

 represented the small squire or sporting yeoman in the days 

 when millionaires had not bought up and swamped all the small 

 freeholds in large estates. A few such men are still to be found 

 here and there, and perhaps nowhere more plentiful than in the 

 old Saxon countries of Kent and Surrey. Devoted to field-sports, 

 Mr. Saxby kept the pack up to the well-known standard, hunt- 

 ing them himself as judiciously as hounds could be hunted, 

 breeding them with care, and finally, when age compelled him 

 to quit the saddle, handing over one of the most perfect packs 

 of harriers in existence to his successor, after having won the re- 

 spect and esteem of all who hunted with him during the many 

 years he held the mastership. A rather heavy weight, he was 

 always well mounted, as he had need to be to keep anywhere 

 near his hounds up and down these steep hills ; and when I re- 

 member him first, some five and twenty years ago, no finer spe- 

 cimen of his class could have been seen. His ruddy complexion 

 the picture of health, his white hair coming out beneath his 

 broad-brimmed hat, his ample green frock coat and somewhat 

 portly figure, as he rode up to the meet, surrounded by the beau- 

 tiful pack in which he took such delight, formed altogether a 

 picture worthy of being preserved on canvas by a Grant, Pearce, 

 or Carter. What a patient man he was, and how little ruftied 

 when we consider the unruly fields with which he was sur- 



