Lord Althorp and his Shorthorns. 125 



u If s just yen of those Greys — it's in tlie bluid — they 

 canna help it." 



Lord Althorp came to Millfield to see the agricul- 

 ture of the Tweed, and his keen shorthorn eye never 

 failed to mark a Midas wherever he met one. He 

 hired Duke from Mr. Donkin, and also sent down one 

 of his huntsman's sons to learn how to farm, and turn 

 the penny the right way. " Coke has two or three 

 crack farms," he was wont to say, " where the tenant 

 dare not have a weed ; here there's uniformity, the 

 land's farmed for farming's sake." One of Mr. Grey's 

 stories about a bull delighted him. " Aye ! he's gone 

 again" said the poor man, when he led his visitor to 

 see his bull, and only found a mighty debris of bricks 

 with earth and dead gorse ; " he often breaks out here ; 

 hes like Samson, he carries off tJie door-posts and a 

 lump of the wall at once ; all our place is so bad, we've 

 not a house that will hold him; we call him Lord 

 Brougham!' The Chancellor of the Exchequer might 

 well say, " I'll tell that story to Brougham, when I 

 get back to London." 



Lord Althorp cared nothing for politics in com- 

 parison with his shorthorns. The Reform banner 

 might 



" Float over Althorp, Russell, and Grey, 

 And the manhood of Harry Brougham ;" 



but he loved rather to sit under one at an agricul- 

 tural meeting, which told of " Hoof and Horn" and 

 " Speed the Plough." When Mr. Grey called upon 

 him at Downing-street, and saw "George" as a pre- 

 liminary, the latter remembered him and gave a little 

 dry laugh : " You've come about cows, sir, ^0 you'll not 

 have to wait long!' Sure enough his Herd Book lay 

 beside him on the desk when Mr. Grey was announced, 

 and formed the text for the next half hour. Every 

 Monday morning, his lordship received the most ac- 

 curate bude,-' of what cows had calved during the 

 week, with the calf marks, and he did very little work 



