CHAPTER XIV 



THE SHIRES 



" Every species of fence every horse doesn't suit, 

 What's a good country hunter may here prove a brute," 



SINGS that clerical bard who wrote the 

 Billesdon-Coplow poem, from which I have 

 already quoted ; and it would be difficult to 

 explain more tersely than do these two lines the 

 difference between a fair useful hunter, and the 

 flyer we call par excellence "a Leicestershire 

 horse ! " 



Alas ! for the favourite unrivalled over 

 Gloucestershire walls, among Dorsetshire doubles, 

 in the level ploughs of Holderness, or up and 

 down the wild Derbyshire hills, when called upon 

 to gallop, we will say, from Ashby pastures to 

 the Coplow, after a week's rain, at Quorn pace, 

 across Quorn fences, unless he happens to possess 

 with the speed of a steeplechaser, the courage of 

 a lion and the activity of a cat ! For the first 

 mile or two pvistime virtutis haud immeinor 

 he bears him gallantly enough, even the unaccus- 



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