204 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



of what they have seen and known, for each hunted 

 with the hounds of which he wrote. They Hved too 

 with the best men who rode over Leicestershire. 



Nimrod was unquestionably a fine horseman. He 

 was perhaps what we should call a " bit of a coper," 

 but he was perfectly frank on the subject and he rode 

 none the worse that he rode to sell, while perhaps he 

 wrote all the better, for he was forced to keep a keen 

 eye on the peculiarities of his contemporaries, to 

 whom he generally had a horse to sell. Whyte- 

 Melville is the most delightful writer on sport that 

 there is in the English language. This no doubt is 

 because he was so much else beside being a sportsman ; 

 a genuine scholar, a lover of literature and a story- 

 teller of the most delightful kind. Riding Recollections 

 and Market Harhorough will probably live as long as 

 men love sport and are willing to read about it. But 

 Whyte-Melville had theories about riding and horses. 

 He believed in thoroughbreds as hunters, in which 

 faith very few people will be with him in practice, 

 and he has, it is believed, laughed gently and good- 

 humouredly at his own theories in Market Harhorough, 

 where he appears for a few pages in the character of 

 Captain Struggles. Yet theories about riding are 

 useful reading because they make us think, though 

 they are not, even from such delightful pages as those 

 of Whyte-Melville, to be put in practice absolutely or 

 slavishly. 



The following examples may help to show what 

 some of the great men of old did and why they did it. 

 One of the greatest riders across country was Mr. 

 Assheton Smith, and, though so much has been 

 written about him, it is impossible not to allude to 

 him. The keynote of his style of horsemanship was 

 resolution. He was a man of strong will and great 



