Breeding of Hu n ters. 291 



formed so well as Mr. Stirling Craufurd's sherry-bay 

 horse, The Shaver. He was rather high and round in 

 his action, but he could go on till he almost made his 

 opponents lie down. The present Lord Forester has 

 also had a long succession of good horses under him, 

 from Jack and Justice down to Whitelips, Conrad, 

 Cold Port, and Will-o'-the-Wisp. But Dick Christian 

 will have his say about Leicestershire, and here our 

 researches into its horse-history must end. More and 

 more of its pasture-land is being gradually laid under 

 the plough, and the fencing has not decreased in 

 severity since the days when that splendid horseman, 

 Sir James Musgrave (the owner of those two peerless 

 fifteen-three greys, which he scarcely knew from each 

 other), used to declare that he never rode at one of its 

 fences, however big, that, feehng sure of getting over 

 it, he was deceived. Those on the road who watched 

 Mr. Richard Sutton leading the field on Brandy- 

 Face, from Vowes Gorse to Stoke End, with even 

 more than his usual power, over the terrific Key- 

 thorpe country, can make affidavits by the dozen 

 about fences which they dare not look at on their own 

 account ; while Wartnaby's farm, near Clipston, with 

 its spiked gates and mortised rails, still exists to take 

 the conceit out of the present and the rising genera- 

 tion, and " pound " them, as he did their fathers beiore 

 them. " They're all welcome to ride over it if they 

 can," was its late owner's boast ; and he always main- 

 tained that "There never were but two men lit to come 

 out hunting — Lord Alvanley and ' Gumley Wilson' — 

 they were the only men that ever rode straight across 

 my farm." 



Half-bred Arabs are often very clever in the hunt- 

 ing field. They are generally very enduring horses, 

 but with lumpy shoulders, and too fond of going with 

 their heads and tails up. Still Mr Child, of Kinlet, 

 could beat almost everything across Leicestershire on 

 one of them, by Lord Clive's Arabian, in Mr. Mey- 



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