BARKBY GORSE TO TILTON. 71 



one's neck off it, and turn liim round to tlie wind ! " 

 'Tis seldom we ride this beautiful line, by the side of the 

 Lowesby brook, where the fences are old and half 

 decayed, and the turf so sound, " Hilly and wet," we 

 may term it, under the test of a twenty minutes' race, 

 and a start that we cannot keep. As a matter of fact, 

 the ground is excellent riding — but hounds have no 

 w^eight to carry — and, reader, your tailor will tell you (in 

 language more delicate and acceptable, no doubt) that 

 you do not girth as you did in 1873. Your groom (who 

 has always a turn for humour, if allowed to indulge in 

 anything so disrespectful) might term it "girthing Letter" 

 — but you deem it otherwise, and your opinion is likely 

 to be stoutly confirmed if, with fourteen stone and a 

 bittock, YOU are now contendino; with hounds to reach 

 Lowesby Station. The latter is one of the many blots 

 now disfiguring a land that erst flowed only with the 

 milk and honey — the cream and spice — of foxhunting. 

 It has established itself in the once sacred vicinity of 

 John o' Gaunt —an outpost of the ]\Iahdi of progress as 

 typified in the G.X.R. Hounds dash across its very pre- 

 cincts, bringing up the huntsman and his little following 

 short in their tracks. Mr. Brocklehurst, M. Deschamps, 

 Capt. Ashton, Mr. Cochrane, jun., Rev. Seabrooke and 

 Lord IManners — not a large proportion of that big 

 " Friday field." The station-master joins keenly in tlie 

 sport, and waves his gold-laced headpiece with frantic 

 zeal, to point the fox's line and the way over, with the 

 most confusing impartiality. At length the leaders realize 

 that their only means of passing across the railway lies 



