PREDECESSORS 243 



hunting seat. But he had never met a Lord Granville. At the 

 Exhibition banquet at the Hotel de Ville in 1851, England, 

 owing to the ill-health of the Prince Consort, was repre- 

 sented by Lord Granville. On this occasion he charmed his 

 hosts by responding for the Commissioners in a French speech 

 free and flowing and full of telling points. ' Had he been 

 Demosthenes himself,' Sir Theodore Martin tells us, ' speak- 

 ing with the purest French accent, he could not have com- 

 manded more genuine applause.' 



The late Lord Hardwicke's popular Mastership was 

 marked by its debonnair magnificence. It was to some 

 extent a sort of renaissance of the Chesterfieldian splendours. 

 Nothing stopped him if it were a question of getting there to 

 help a deer. Dr. Croft once saw him jump some high iron 

 hurdles in an emergency of this kind. His recent death will 

 be regretted by all who knew him in the Queen's Country. 



Lord Suftield has the art of galloping like steam between 

 his fences and yet jumping the place almost from a stand. 

 He thus negotiates the trappiest obstacles with safety and 

 despatch, without upsetting high-couraged and even fractious 

 animals, and — for this is the real point — without giving spec- 

 tators the faintest impression of sticky ' come-up ' sort of 

 riding. This means fine hands. The first time Lord Sufiield 

 went out with the Duh allow, a country which in the opinion 

 of the natives is only practicable to those brought up within 

 a few miles of Cork, they never could catch him for twenty 

 minutes, a surprised top-sawyer of the Hunt being overheard 

 thus to exhort his friend : ' For God's sake, Mike, ride at the 

 man in the beard ! ' Unsurpassed as a judge of a horse or a 

 hound, and one of the most undeniable cross-country riders 

 of his day. Lord Coventry brings knowledge and experience 

 to bear upon every practical detail of his office. The ancient 

 honour and everyday welfare of the Royal Hunt are in safe 

 keeping. 



E 2 



