A BUNTING STABLE. 49 



which should make him ring false metal in the ears of 

 the hard-riding exquisites around him. 



"While he was walking, silently himself, along with 

 his three noble companions of the moment, some such 

 thoughts as these were passing through his brain, and 

 he was prepared to be astonished, and yet determined 

 to exhibit no astonishment, at what he had never yet 

 seen, the internal nicety and perfect order and ar- 

 rangement of an English stable menage. For though 

 perhaps there are no men in the world more perfect 

 both in the theory and the practice of managing, con- 

 ditioning and training race-horses, especially for four 

 mile heats, which closely resemble the management ot 

 the thorough-bred English hunter, or steeple-chaser, 

 than the Virginians, it must also be admitted that 

 their stables are built and furnished and conducted in a 

 scrambling, make-shift kind of way ; as different from 

 the regular method of an English stable-department, 

 as are the tactics of a regular regiment from the dis- 

 orderly movements of a raw militia, or the discipline 

 and silence of a ship of war from the brawl and bustle 

 of a French or Italian merchantman. 



They soon reached the doors of the stabling, which 

 had been selected and ordered by the old and experi- 

 enced stud-groom of Count Matuschevitz for his mas- 

 ter, and the young American, who now stood nattily 

 dressed in his close-bodied cut-away coat, long-waisted 

 waistcoat, loose-cut drab-breeches and white-top boots, 

 expectant at the entrance. 



"Well, Roberts," said the Duke of Beaufort, who 

 knew him of old for a veteran Meltonian, and whose 

 confidence in his own true nobility and perfect good- 

 natured self-reliance, kept him entirely free from any 

 touch of that snob-aristocracy, which has been alluded 

 to in the case of Cheshire, Jardinier, and others, 

 which led them to treat those who were^ or whom they 

 affected to hold as being their inferiors in degree or 

 172 



