Recollections of Carlisle. 39 



of two hundred years ago have much less interest for 

 us than our own recollections of Stanwix Brow, when 

 six mail-guards were " sounding the cheerful horn," 

 and the little mail (as the girl said of the ghost) "went 

 by like a flash." Great were the cricket struggles in 

 that meadow on the right, when the 34th Regiment 

 played the county. Private Allen, who was supposed 

 to live by suction, was invariably taken out of the 

 Black Hole for the afternoon, and he sometimes rose 

 to the occasion with " 50 not out," while Lieutenant 

 Simpson and Corporal Moss played a good and a 

 much safer game. Blues and Yellows united most 

 harmoniously in the County Eleven — Colonel Low- 

 ther,* with his slow round-handers, at one end, and Mr. 



* Of the once familiar faces absent at the Smithfield Club Show, 

 none are more missed than Colonel Lowther'e. His Barleythorpe ewes 

 and wethers could always come into a front place, either at Oakham or 

 Islington. It was to attend the show at the little Rutlandshire assize 

 town, that he left London early in the December of '66, and never re- 

 turned. He was born in '90, and entering the 7th Hussars at 17, saw 

 active Peninsular service under Sir John Moore and The Duke. His 

 fine horsemanship, health, and heart carried him well through every 

 peril. During the retreat of Corunna he was exposed to sleet and snow 

 for nearly sixteen days, without shelter ; and on one occasion he rode, 

 or rather "nursed" one horse eighty miles with despatches, without 

 change or rest. Few men had a finer hand on a bit, and old sergeants 

 of the W. and C. Yeomanry Cavalry love to tell how he would ride up 

 to a yeoman, if his horse was too much for him, and beg to "let me 

 try him," and soon send him back perfectly quiet to the ranks. He 

 was a first flight man in the palmy days of the Quorn and the Cottes- 

 more, of which he was field-master, when his father, the late Earl, 

 became blind. Dick Christian used to speak of his ride with Sir James 

 Musgrave, Mr. Maxse, Mr. Gilmour, and Captain White, as "the 

 finest bit of jealousy I ever see from Glaston pasture to Ketton village ; 

 you could have covered them with a sheet." The hounds were kept in 

 great style at Cottesmore ; but Lambert, the huntsman, latterly became 

 rather slack, and they did not kill their foxes as they had once done. 

 Such an establishment, situated in the heart of such a country, had an 

 old English flavour about it which hunting-men declared to be without 

 rival elsewhere. " The Master of Cottesmore" seemed to hunting what 

 "The Master of Trinity" is to the scholar, and hence the Meltonians 

 for many a year have earnestly desired to see a Cottesmore Hunt once 

 more, with a Lowther at the head of it. Such a rare sportsman as the 

 Colonel never quite fell in with the modern style of hunting, as he 



