Breedmg of Hun tei^s. 265 



slow at his fences, except when he found a young 

 horse careless at timber, and in want of a fall over 

 something that would not break, liked Limner so 

 much, that he went to Mr. Lynes of Oxendon, from 

 whom he had purchased him for 200 guineas, at six 

 years old, and gave him a long price for the dam ; 

 but, with the usual ill luck of all fancy purchases, she 

 died very shortly after, during foaling. Limner is 

 still remembered in the Ouorn Hunt, as being the 

 most perfect hunter that Sir Harry ever had in his 

 stud, and was always ridden in a plain snaffle. He 

 was a golden-coloured lengthy fifteen-three chestnut, 

 on short legs, immensely fast, and safe at his fences, 

 until a very foggy morning after a frost seemed to 

 make him a roarer, as if by magic. Owing to the 

 mist, Sir Harry's groom had not found his master till 

 after they had killed their first fox at the end of a 

 mile run. The hounds had just broken it up, when 

 Sir Harry said to a friend, " Listen ! here comes a 

 banging roarer ;" when, to his horror, his own favourite 

 loomed slowly in sight from the same field. Julius 

 Csesar was up to fifteen stone himself, and regularly 

 took his turn in the hunting-field ; and we have been 

 told that he carried Earl Lonsdale's postman on off 

 days between Cottesmore and Oakham. His lordship 

 always spoke of this horse, to the last, as one of the 

 best he ever rode ; and seeing that his devotion to 

 the chase once tempted him in desperation, after he 

 had been hopelessly frozen in for three weeks, to have 

 out his hounds and show his visitors one of the best 

 runs of the season through six inches of snow, and to 

 be perpetually led by his groom through a run, in the 

 sad interval which preceded his looo-guinea couch- 

 ing operation by Alexander, he was no mean judge 

 of their capabilities. Bishop Bathurst, who seized a 

 gun out of his son's hands, and shot a cock-pheasant 

 at eighty, was not more enthusiastic ; and his ear, 

 like that of Fielding, the blind police magistrate, who 



