2 THE CREAM OF LEICESTERSHIRE. [Season 



and the kicking in a gateway will be as fierce as in one 

 of the dear old football scrummages at Rugby, against which 

 tender j^arents are now crj'ing out so vehemently. In 

 mortal terror, men will be snatching up their knees as 

 they see eai's go back and tail tucked in, and the thought of 

 the bridle gate out of Barkby Holt, with the hounds away 

 is too awful to contemplate. Horse-dealers, farmers, and — 

 we are sorry to add — ladies, must especiallj'' be avoided ; for 

 who ever saw a vicious kicker that was not ridden b}' one of 

 these three ? The two former, by the way, are having a bad 

 time of it, with no chance of sho^Ning or selling their animals, 

 and no one will feel so much inclination to buy for an indefinite 

 future as to run after them now. Not that there is ever anj' 

 difilculty in selling a real "horse for Leicestershire; " he will 

 always command his price, and there are plent}^ of men eager 

 to give it. But the difticulty lies in finding him ; for, like the 

 diamonds in South Africa, he is only to be met with after 

 much toil and disappointment, and many a glittering gem turns 

 out to be worthless ; and no wonder, Avlien we consider all the 

 requisites that go to make up such a horse. It is not suffi- 

 cient that he should be able to gallop and jump, or even that 

 he should be classed as A 1 in a different country. A perfect 

 Leicestershire horse is a variety of his own, distinct and 

 separate from the rest of his species, and perhaps comparaitvelj^ 

 useless elsewhere. Of course, everyone knows that blood, 

 shape, and courage are the three chief requisites in a hunter ; 

 but by no means everyone appreciates to what extent these three 

 are all necessary in the class of horse under mention. Blood he 

 must have, and the more the better, so long as it is not at the 

 expense of bone ; for the old saying of " an ounce of blood 

 being worth a pound of bone" holds good uj) to a certain point, 

 and no further. Thus the commonest mistake men fall into 

 when the}' first mount themselves for a flying country is to 

 think that, so long as passable s^'mmetry and clever fencing 

 are not altogether lost sight of, blood and breeding will do 

 everything else for them. But, as Whyte Melville amply 



