22 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



for Blue Ruin." This pacified the placable old master, who 

 often afterwards related the anecdote with no little zest. 

 He, however, refused to sell his favourite hunter. Mr. Warde 

 was a master of hounds for fifty-two years; he was twenty- 

 two years in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, thirteen in 

 Northamptonshire, six in the New Forest, and eleven in 

 Berkshire. The famous Bob Forfeit was his huntsman in 

 Oxfordshire. Mr. Smith had the highest opinion of his 

 breed of hounds, and took some of them with him into 

 Lincolnshire. Mr, Warde's mastership of hounds exceeded 

 in length of time that of Mr. Smith by the interval the 

 latter hunted at Belvoir, after he left the Burton coun- 

 try.* There was an excellent song written in 1823, when 

 Mr. "Warde hunted the Craven country, of which the fol- 

 lowing is one of the stanzas : — 



" Here ia health to John Warde, and success to his hounds : 



Your Quornites may swish at the rasper so clever, 

 And skim ridge and furrow, and charge an ox fence ; 



But will riding alone make a sportsman ? No, never ! 

 So I think we'd just send them some tutors from hence. 



In the van place Charles Warde, Fulwer Fowle, you'll accord, 

 With Villeboisf and Wroughton, might teach them the ground ; 



And if they'd be ruled, or deign to be schooled. 

 They might yet take some hints from John Warde and his hounds." 



* Two years, viz. from 1824 to 1826 ; Mr. Smith was a master of 

 hounds from 1806 to 1858, barring these two years. 



t " In a difficult bad-scenting plough, and wet woodland country, 

 few men that ever I saw," writes one who often hunted with the Craven, 

 " could hunt a fox better or ride closer to his hounds than old Ben Foot, 

 huntsman to the late Mr. Villebois, who formerly lived with Sir Thomas 

 Mostyn. One day, when we were running a ringing fox with a flash- 

 ing scent in Stipe, a well-known covert, just as Foot got his hounds 

 well settled, a farmer hallooed a fresh fox at the other extremity of the 

 covert. Upon this Foot stopped his horse, and fell a * moralizing' tlius ; 

 * How hignorant, sir, some folks be ! Now can't he see that we be 

 engaged to this fox ? ' " 



