Scarlett, 305 



The brig^htest era for Shropshire seems wni staples and 

 to connect itself insensibly with Will ^^s Whips. 

 Staples and his two great whips, Jack Wiglesworth 

 and Tom Flint. The dance at Will's wedding was 

 quite a county event ; and Shropshire men roar yet 

 over poor Tom's celebrated speech — " For tJie honour 

 youve done me, in proposing my Jiealth in my absence — 

 tJiafs ahvays it, &c.^' when he had never left the room. 

 Tom Matthews did not hold office under Will, but we 

 can hardly wonder at the devotion, with which he 

 always watched for the honour of giving up his horse 

 in a run to him. This happened seldom enough in 

 Longwaist's day, who was only once seen resting his 

 weak crooked knees on a hedge-top, quite unable to 

 rise at it, while Will kept craftily talking to his hounds, 

 as if that was an attitude of pure choice on his part, 

 and not of necessity. The Shifnall men wanted sadly 

 to back Will and that great raking low-back, against 

 Moonraker and Mr. Sirdefield, but Will vowed he 

 could not ride a yard without music. 



The Atcham Bridge meet has never xheAtcham 

 looked itself, since " the three" were wont ^'^'^s^ ^^^t- 

 to wait with the hounds in the meadow for Sir Bel- 

 lingham. We know no spot so rich in hunting history, 

 even if Jack Mytton had not jumped those rails, with 

 his arm in a sling. Everything in the scene is so good 

 of its kind, and the parts so beautifully disposed in 

 relation to each other, that an artist could make no 

 alteration for the sake of breadth or effect. The 

 salmon-haunted Severn, to whose nymphs the Shrews- 

 bury boys have addressed such boundless copies of 

 iambics and Sapphics, both in Butler's and Kennedy's 

 time, steals quietly past the osier bed where Will used 

 to hope he was at home, and on through the massive 

 iron-grey arches to the sea. A rectory and church, 

 the red stone of whose Early English tower blends 

 so gracefully with the ivy which half enwraps it, 

 shuts out the distant Wrekin ; while a herd of dark- 



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