HUNTS AND THEIR HISTORY 141 



type permanent in their kennels. They were enabled 

 to do this because, being the servants of great noble- 

 men with wide estates, they could send out many 

 scores of puppies to walk and thus had a large field 

 for choice. Other men, who came afterwards, im- 

 proved the hounds. Goodall gave the Belvoir dash, 

 and Gillard increased the music and the stamina ; 

 but old Goosey and W. Smith, the Brocklesby hunts- 

 man, it was who fixed the type to which all modem 

 fox-hounds are bred to-day. Luckily for us and fox- 

 hunting, these men lived before the days when a 

 boy's gifts and abilities were liable to be dissipated 

 by what is called education. They gave minds un- 

 distracted by irrelevant acquirements to the task of 

 their lives and achieved success in proportion. 



The Masters of the Belvoir hounds have been not 

 less notable men than the huntsmen. The active 

 Masters in the field have not always been the Dukes 

 themselves, for from the death of the soldier Marquis 

 of Granby to the time when the sixth Duke took 

 over the pack from Lord Forester, by far the greater 

 part of the time the hounds were managed by relatives 

 or friends. The fourth Duke was a statesman and 

 the friend of Pitt ; the fifth, though he was proud 

 of the pack, only regarded the hounds as one of the 

 lesser interests of a busy life, for this Duke and his 

 Duchess were by gifts and tastes leaders of society. 

 The visitors to Belvoir during their reign comprised 

 every one of note, and thus no doubt helped to make 

 the town of Melton fashionable and hunting popular ; 

 but the fifth Duke was not, like his son and successor, 

 a keen sportsman. The best of Melton society was 

 always to be found at the castle, and Beau Brummell 

 and Mr. Assheton Smith and Sir Francis Grant, 

 sportsman, man of fashion and P.R.A., Berkeley 



