A Week at Melto7i, 27 



horse speeds rapidly on his way, " now plunging 

 into tunnels, now bounding into liglit/^ puffing and 

 snorting as if he found " the going heavy/^ whilst 

 he gallops along over the still green fields of Hendon 

 and Finchley, dashes through Ampthill and Bedford, 

 then " forrard, forrard/' through Sharnbrook — a well- 

 remembered meet of '^ the Oakley '^ — Finedon Poplars, 

 the delight of " the Pytchley ; " then, skirting Ket- 

 tering, he comes to a check at Leicester, after a sharp 

 burst of an hour and a half. During this long halt 

 we have time to revisit the town which some forty 

 years' since was one of the head-quarters of people 

 who hunted in Leicestershire, vying at that time 

 with Melton in offering accommodation to those who 

 visited the shires. 



By the introduction of iron-ways that which was 

 comparatively a small country town now approaches 

 very closely to a city, boasting of its Theatre Royal, 

 tramways. Temperance Hall, American Meat Stores, 

 where a roaring trade is carried on in fresh beef at 

 from fourpence to eightpence a pound — our enter- 

 prising cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, 

 having had the hardihood to challenge the English 

 grazier to a trial of strength on his own ground, even 

 in the very centre of the finest grazing land in the 

 old country — whilst a convocation of coal trucks, such 

 as eye has never beheld before, hailing from every 

 quarter, the best Wallsend, the Derbyshire Brights, 

 the ardent Silkstones, meet, in a way highly sugges- 

 tive in these parlous times of a " conference ^' on 

 some " burning question " of the day — probably the 

 approaching roasting of Turkey — which at this season 

 so occupies our insular minds. This alteration in 



