MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 19 



with a sort of sliding scale of prices if he chose to bay — the price 

 of " Ercles" (the big brown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire 

 at the end of the first month, and gradually rising according to 

 the length of time he kept him beyond that ; while " Multurn in 

 Parvo," the resolute chesnut, was booked at thirty, with the right 

 of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckram little 

 expected. He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he 

 thought him when he got him home. 



The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose ; and 

 not being the man to keep hack-horses to look at, we must be 

 setting him a-going. 



" Leicestersheer swells," as Mr. Buckram would call them, with 

 their fourteen hunters and four hacks, will smile at the idea of a 

 man going from home to hunt with only a couple of "screws," 

 but Mr. Sponge knew what he was about, and didn't want any 

 one to counsel him. He knew there were places where a man can 

 follow up the effect produced by a red coat in the morning to 

 great advantage in the evening ; and if he couldn't hunt every 

 day in the week, as he could have wished, he felt he might fill up 

 his time perhaps quite as profitably in other ways. The ladies, to 

 do them justice, are never at all suspicious about men — on the 

 " nibble " — always taking it for granted, they are " all they could 

 wish," and they know each other so well, that any cautionary 

 hints act rather in a man's favour than otherwise. Moreover, 

 hunting men, as we said before, are all supposed to be rich, and as 

 very few ladies are aware that a horse can't hunt every day in the 

 week, they just class the whole "genus" fourteen-horse power 

 men, ten-horse power men, five-horse power men, two-horse power 

 men, together, and tying them in a bunch, label it " very rich,'" 

 and proceed to take measures accordingly. 



Let us now visit one of the " strongholds " of fox and fortune- 

 hunting. 



A sudden turn of a long, gently-rising, but hitherto uninterest- 

 ing road, brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, 

 well-wooded, beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose 

 fine green pastures are brightened with occasional gleams of a 

 meandering river, flowing through the centre of the vale. In the 

 far distance, looking as though close upon the blue hills, though 

 in reality several miles apart, sundry spires and taller buildings 

 are seen rising above the grey mists towards which a straight, 

 undeviating, matter-of-fact line of railway passing up the right of 

 the vale, directs the eye. This is the famed Laverick "Wells, the 

 resort, as indeed all watering-places are, according to Newspaper 

 accounts, of 



" Knights and dames, 

 And all that wealth and lofty lineage claim." 



