THE BEST HORSEMAN IN ENGLAND. 139 



** The hounds had not been there a minute, 



When the duke cried, * Hark ! halloo ! away ! ' 

 Not a hound was there left behind in it, — 



You'd swear they would show him some play. 

 Th' hard riders jump'd off in a crack. 



Not one of them minding his neck, 

 And for Belvoir were running him back, 



When Tom Smith rode the hounds to a check." 



I cannot resist the temptation of here inserting the 

 language of ISTimrod, it is so hearty, genuine, and unmis- 

 takable. " I have a long list in letter S," says he, in his 

 alphabetical catalogue of eminent riders, " and of course 

 lots of Smiths. But Theodore Hook says,' they should be num- 

 bered : ' and there can be no hesitation as to the best claim 

 to 'number one,' namely, T. Assheton Smith, Esq., of Ted- 

 worth House, Hants, late owner of, and huntsman to, the 

 Quorn hounds, and at present (1841) hunting a very good 

 pack of his own in Hampshire. Now I am not going to 

 give merely my own opinion of Mr. Thomas Assheton Smith, 

 as a horseman and rider to hounds, but shall lay before my 

 readers that of all the sporting world, at least all who have 

 seen him in the field ; which is, that taking him from the 

 first day's hunting of the season to the last, place him on the 

 best horse in his stable or on the worst, he is sure to be 

 with his hounds, and close to them too. In fact, he has 

 undoubtedly proved himself the best and hardest rider 

 England ever saw, and it would be vain in any man to dis- 

 pute his title to that character. But we might as well 

 attempt to make a blind man an optician, a lame man a 

 dancing-master, or a one-armed one a fiddler, as to suppose 

 that any gentleman could arrive at this ultra state of per- 

 fection in a very difficult art, which horsemanship un- 

 doubtedly is, unless nature had been prodigal of the 

 requisites. Setting aside the daring, undaunted, the not-to- 

 be-denied * determination of Mr. Smith to get to hounds, 



* No word 80 thoroughly describes his character as the English 

 word "pluck." 



