CHAPTER II 

 MR. THOMAS BOOTHBY 



IT is now a good many years ago since a brilliant 

 horseman, who annually betook himself to Melton 

 Mowbray, defined an ideal hunting country as one which 

 should contain no covert which hounds could not draw 

 thoroughly in twenty minutes, and whose surface should 

 show no hill long enough, or steep enough, to blow a 

 horse in good condition. To these not inconsiderable 

 advantages the sportsman might have added the entire 

 absence of plough, of any fence which the best com- 

 bination of man and horse could not surmount, and, as 

 a matter of course, that no wire, barbed or otherwise, 

 should lurk in unsuspected places. 



If Leicestershire cannot entirely comply with all these 

 requirements, it remains, at any rate, the acknowledged 

 headquarters of fox-hunting, while its physical character- 

 istics have attracted the unbounded admiration of suc- 

 cessive generations of fox-hunters for at least a century. 

 " Nimrod " began his Leicestershire hunting tour with 

 the words that Leicestershire "may justly be deno- 

 minated the Montpelier of hunting countries ; in the 

 eyes of a sportsman it is a Vale of Cashmere, and in 

 comparison with it all others retire longo intervallo." 

 "Nimrod" perhaps acts the part of fugleman in prais- 

 ing Leicestershire, and from that day to this to take 

 up a pen to write about Leicestershire has been to laud 

 it. Its rich soil is favourable for holding a scent, its 



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