134: REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



the innumerable flocks of starlings that always in the 

 severe season roosted in the laurel plantation abutting on 

 Ashdown Copse, and used to say, how wonderful it was, 

 that when these countless myriads all on a sudden turned 

 as it were on a pivot, without any previous signal, they 

 never by any chance in their gyrations struck against one 

 another, or interfered with their respective evolutions in the 

 air. These birds were by his strict orders never molested. 



The natural kindness of disposition which thus mani- 

 fested itself towards inferior creatures, shone out as a fea- 

 ture in his character, only with greater strength and in- 

 tensity, in his treatment of those around him. No master, 

 peremptory as he was in his commands, and exacting in 

 having his orders at once executed and to the very letter, 

 was more beloved than he was by his servants. If he was 

 violent and tyrannical, as has been sometimes represented, 

 how was it that for a long course of years the same indivi- 

 duals composed his household, and that the retainers on his 

 estates in Hampshire and North Wales had grown grey- 

 headed in his service ? In his friendships he was a man of 

 strong affections, as has been already observed, and of a 

 childlike tenderness of heart. Dictatorial, impetuous, and 

 overbearing as he occasionally was, and these failings sprang 

 as much from his self-confidence as from his ardent tem- 

 perament, it is recorded of him that he never lost a friend. 

 He had survived almost all his contemporaries, but among 

 those who enjoyed his intimacy latterly, out of his own 

 family, were the Duke of Bedford, the Hon. Philip Pierre- 

 pont. Sir John Pollen, Mr. John Drumraond, the Rev. Henry 

 Fowle, the late Mr. Charles Bell Ford, Admiral Montague, 

 and Sir Richard Sutton ; of these Sir Richard, so many 

 years his comrade and fellow-s|»ortsman in the hunting 

 field, held the place nearest to his heart. When he heard 

 of his death, in 1856, he was overwhelmed with grief, and 

 burst into a flood of tears ; and afterwards, when he com- 

 menced telling a story about Sir Richard, he suddenly threw 



