2 The Pytchley Himt, Past and Present, [chap. i. 



astonished that one of tlieir number, and that so distin- 

 gaished a one as the senior member for Birmiaghara, 

 should be ignorant of the proper mode of pronouncing 

 the name of this well-known hunt, and received the 

 " lapsus linguae ^^ with shouts of amusement. Often 

 before had the great orator moved the august occupants 

 of the benches around him to laughter, but on no 

 previous occasion, perhaps, had he so fairly '^ brought 

 down the House" as on this. Unlike his great political 

 opponent. Lord Beaconsfield, who, at least on one 

 occasion, seems to have distinguished himself on the 

 " Pigskin,'^ Mr. Bright had probably never seen a pack 

 of hounds in the field. To him " the Quorn," " the 

 Pytchley," and " the Cottesmore," are institutions un- 

 worthy the notice of any rightly thinking man, and 

 great must have been his surprise at finding that so 

 small an error had raised so great a laugh. His illus- 

 trious rival, on the occasion just referred to, seems, by 

 his own account, to have accomplished a feat in the 

 saddle quite equal to any that he performed on the floor 

 of the " House.^' Writing to his sister in 1834, he 

 says, " I hunted the other day w4th Sir Henry Smith's 

 hounds, and, although not in pink, was the best- 

 mounted man in the field ; riding an Arabian mare, 

 which I nearly killed, a run of thirty miles; and I 

 stopped at nothing." A run of thirty miles on an 

 Arabian mare, and stopping, at nothing ! The reader of 

 such a performance may well borrow the exclamation of 

 Duminie Sampson, and exclaim " Prodigious. '^ "Of all 

 pleasure cometh satiety at last," says the moralist; and 

 whatever the sensations of the rider may have been 

 during the last three or four of the thirty miles, it is 



