MR. smith's QUORN MANAGEMENT. 25 



Mr. Osbaldeston, Mr. Smith took his stud in 1816 to 

 Lincoln to work the Burton Hunt. He held this capital 

 country for eight years, until 1824, when he was suc- 

 ceeded by Sir Richard Sutton, and, after an interval of two 

 years, duiing which he hunted chiefly at Belvoir, went into 

 Hampshire. 



The celebrated Nimrod,* who was an eye-witness, thus 

 testifies to Mr. Smith's management of the Quorn : — 



" Lord Foley was succeeded in the possession of the 

 Quorn hounds by that most conspicuous sportsman of 

 modern times, Thomas Assheton Smith, who kept them 

 eight or nine seasons. As combining the character of a 

 skilful sportsman with that of a desperate horseman, per- 

 haps his parallel is not to be found ; and his name will be 

 handed down to posterity as a specimen of enthusiastic zeal 

 in one individual pursuit, very rarely equalled. Mr. Smith 

 did not become a master of fox-hounds because it was the 

 fashion to be a master of fox-hounds, neither did he go a 

 hunting because others went a hunting, neither did he ride 

 well up to his hounds one day and loiter a mile behind 

 them the next. No : from the first day of the season to the 

 last he was always the same man, the same desperate fellow 

 over a country, and unquestionably possessing, on every 

 occasion and at every hour of the day, the most bulldog-like 

 nerve ever exhibited in the saddle. His motto was, * I'll 

 be with my hounds ;' and all those who have seen him in 

 the field must acknowledge he made no vain boast of his 



* Charles Apperley, author of "The Northern" and "German 

 Tours" in the Sporting Magazine. Kimrod's popularity as a writer on 

 Bporting topics has never been equalled. When a ship once arrived at 

 Calcutta from England, Colonel Nesbitt, who then hunted the Calcutta 

 hounds, hastened down to the beach and asked, "What news?" 

 "There are new ministers in," was the reply. "Hang the new 

 ministry," said the colonel ; "is Nimrod's Yorkshire Tour arrived?" 

 *'A man," says Nimrod, relating the anecdote himself, " must be dead 

 to fame to be insensible to such a compliment as this." INIr. Apperley 

 was the son of a clergyman in Shropshire. 



