HIS SERIOUS ILLNESS IN 1856. 117 



North Wales, Mr. Smith was seized with an alarming illness, 

 which caused the greatest apprehension to his friends. The 

 skill, however, of Dr. Stokes, of Dublin, who was sent for, 

 added to the unremitting attentions of Mr. Richards, ol 

 Bangor, his usual medical adviser, who well knew his pa- 

 tient's constitution, brought him round after many weeks 

 of protracted suffering, chiefly by the use of stimulants, to 

 which he had never previously resorted, and which he was 

 now reluctantly persuaded to try. Mrs. Smith was herself 

 at this period in a very weak state of health, but devoted 

 herself most assiduously to the care of her husband, and her 

 attention greatly tended to his recovery. Even now, when 

 he was in a most prostrate and debilitated condition, the 

 sight of his horse saddled at the door, ready to carry him 

 to the Port, only a mile distant, seemed at once to cheer 

 and revive him ; and the man who had been five minutes 

 before gasping for breath on the sofa, under the powerful 

 hold of his old enemy — asthma — when once astride 

 the animal trotted off apparently by mechanical impulse, 

 as if he had more need of his hounds than of a phy- 

 sician. 



Although he rallied from this attack in an astonishing 

 manner, he was no longer the same man. The erect gait 

 was bent, and the eagle eye had lost its lustre. He returned 

 to Ted worth as usual ; but, at the annual meet on the 

 1st of November, 1857, the hounds met without the 

 accustomed centre-figure of their master, who slowly rode 

 up to them without his scarlet. He remarked, quite 

 seriously, that if he had worn his hunting-gear, and his 

 pack should observe that he could not follow them, they 

 would show their sorrow by refusing to hunt the fox. A 

 universal gloom pervaded the field ; he looked wistfully and 

 lovingly at his old favourites, the heroes of many a well- 

 fought field ; and, as he quickly went back into the hall, 

 shrinking almost from the outer air, while the horsemen and 

 pack turned away slowly towards the shrubberies, every one 



