38 A VIRGINIAN. 



public buildings, in any thing belonging solely to it- 

 self* unequal to any village of five hundred inhabi- 

 tants in the United States. Yet it is filled with villas, 

 empty for one half the year, redolent of every luxury, 

 overflowing with every comfort during the other half; 

 built up with lines of stables, more solid than our 

 most massive warehouses, handsomer, and better fin- 

 ished within than most of our country churches, capa- 

 ble of containing the horses to mount ten regiments 

 of cavalry. 



On an average a hundred gentlemen would turn out 

 in those days, in scarlet, white leathers and top-boots, 

 six days in the week from Melton Mowbray ; and with 

 a less stud than twenty-five or thirty horses no man 

 could do that. 



No one could dream of riding to the Quorn without 

 two horses daily in the field; the second ridden by a 

 light boy, with a quick eye and good judgment, hov- 

 ering on the outskirts of the run, riding the chords of 

 arcs and hypothenuses of triangles, and ready at a 

 moment's notice to remount his master, in case of ac- 

 cidents or emergency. 



No horse, not the best that ever trod on a shodden 

 hoof, can come again above three times in a fortnight, 

 very few above twice ; and therefore taking casualties, 

 coughs, lameness, and sometimes deaths, into account, 

 no man can hope to hunt every day at Melton, during 

 the season, without at least twenty-five — scarcely with- 

 out thirty horses in his stable. 



To every five horses one man and two boys are al- 

 lowed ; besides a stud-groom to each stable, a man in 

 his way and line no less important or esteemed than 

 John Scott, the great English, or Sam Laird, the 

 great American trainer, to overlook and be answera- 

 ble for the whole. 



The whole array cannot be counted at less than 

 twenty men and thirty horses, for the field work of 



