A CLUB-EOOM. 17 



with clever Russian, in the recess of Parliament, when 

 the peers shoot pheasants, and the members fox-hunt, 

 they had no more chance with Matuschevitz, than a 

 French hoxeur would have had with Tom Crib ; or a 

 French jochei with Jim Robinson or Chififnej, in the 

 pig-skin. 



To this day and hour, no Frenchman, not even the 

 admirable Crichton of the nineteenth century, the imi- 

 tated but inimitable D'Orsay, has ever been known to 

 get even tolerably well across a country. It is not 

 pluck they lack, nor horsemanship — their cavalry are 

 better riders than the English — but somehow or other 

 it is not in them — they haven't got the go, still less 

 the judgment and coolness, the head, the hand, and 

 the seat, which must be combined to carry a man well 

 across the country in the pig-skin upon the back of a 

 flyer. 



Multitudinous Frenchmen can pop over rabbits in a 

 furze brake, slaughter pheasants at a battue, shoot 

 hares from behind a rock or a bush, lying perdu, at a 

 dead aim ; but when we see one Frenchman, born and 

 bred in la belle France, do his day's walking and day's 

 shooting in good style on the moors — throw a fly 

 neatly over a trout stream — or ride, as we have said, 

 even tolerably well across a country, we shall expect 

 the next morning to see a blackamoor washed white, 

 and a leopard change his spots. 



Bat this little digression, finished, we return to our 

 muttons, and beg to assm-e the reader that if no 

 Frenchman ever had the go in him for Leicestershire, 

 the Russian Matuschevitz had it in perfection. 



If at first the old stagers laughed in their sleeves at 

 the somewhat dragoon seat, the tip of the toe only in 

 the stirrup, the heel well sunk and turned outward, 

 and the too accurately manege style of the whole seat 

 and turn out, no one could deny the unmistakeablc 

 firmness of that seat at the stiffest fence or widest 

 170 



