MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 141 



who had given his young idea a sporting turn, entering him with 

 ferrets and rabbits, and so training him on with terriers and rat- 

 catching, badger-baiting and otter-hunting, up to the noble sport 

 of fox-hunting itself, in all probability his lordship would have 

 been a regular miser. As it was, he did not spend a halfpenny 

 upon anything but hunting ; and his hunting, though well, was 

 still economically done, costing him some couple of thousand 

 a-year, to which, for the sake of euphony, Jack used to add an 

 extra five hundred ; " two thousand five underd a year, five-and- 

 twenty underd a year," sounding better, as Jack thought, and 

 more imposing, than a couple of thousand, or two thousand, 

 a-year. There were few days on which Jack didn't inform the 

 field what the hounds cost his lordship, or rather what they 

 didn't cost him. 



Woodmansterne, his lordship's principal residence, was a fine 

 place. It stood in an undulating park of 800 acres, with its 

 church, and its lakes, and its heronry, and its decoy, and its race- 

 course, and its varied grasses of the choicest kinds, for feeding the 

 numerous herds of deer, so well known at Temple Bar and Charing- 

 cross as the Woodmansterne venison. The house was a modern 

 edifice, built by the sixth earl, who, having been a " liver," had 

 run himself aground by his enormous outlay on this Italian 

 structure, which was just finished when he died. The fourth earl, 

 who, we should have stated, was a "liver" too, was a man of 

 vertu — a great traveller and collector of coins, pictures, statues, 

 marbles, and curiosities generally — things that are very dear to 

 buy, but oftentimes extremely cheap when sold ; and, having 

 collected a vast quantity from all parts of the world (no easy feat 

 in those days), he made them heirlooms, and departed this life, 

 leaving the next earl the pleasure of contemplating them. The 

 fifth earl having duly starved through life, then made way for the 

 sixth ; who, finding such a quantity of valuables stowed away as 

 he thought in rather a confined way, sent to London for a first- 

 rate architect, Sir Thomas Squareall (who always posted with four 

 horses), who forthwith pulled down the old brick-and-stone 

 Elizabethan mansion, and built the present splendid Italian 

 structure, of the finest polished stone, at an expense of — furniture 

 and all — say 120,000/. ; Sir Thomas's estimates being 30,000/. 

 The seventh earl of course they starved ; and the present lord, at 

 the age of forty-three, found himself in possession of house, and 

 coins, and curiosities ; and, best of all, of some 90,000/. in the 

 funds, which had quietly rolled up during the latter part of his 

 venerable parent's existence. His lordship then took counsel with 

 himself — first, whether he should marry or remain single ; 

 secondly, whether he should live or starve. Having considered 

 the subject with all the attention a limited allowance of brains 



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