Rise and Progress of tlic Leicester Breed of Sliccp. 341 
Avarren and a sheep-walk as well, with public shepherds, who 
made an annual ewe and wether draft from the lloeks. Writers 
of the period, who intermeddled but little with farming-stock in 
their essays and their lays, had a word to spare for its pastures, 
and " the height and goodnesse of its sheep ;" and one of them 
had " credibly heard that neither Lemster nor Cotswould can 
exceed them, if one respect either largenesse of the bodie, fine- 
nesse of the wooll, or goodnesse of the breed." 
They might have already acquired a name in this bean-growing 
shire, but still it is to Mr. Bake well that they owe that improve- 
ment which has kept them to this day in the front-rank of the 
long wools. The late Mr. Creswell, of Ravenstone, was nearly 
the last of those who attended the ram sales at Dishley. He 
was there as a lad of fifteen, with his father ; and not many 
months before his death,* he recounted to us with all the zest of 
youth, how he watched the hirers drawing cuts for choice with 
hay slips, or taking figured marbles out of a bag. There are 
pictures extant of the great breeder in his drab Quaker-cut coat, 
his jack-boots, and his periwig. Dine who might with him, 
he would not break through his rule of having a small round 
table to himself, in a corner near the window. Men of every 
degree were found at that too hospitable board, and Mr, Coke 
said with truth that " Dishley is the best inn on the road." 
Arthur Young tarried there in his pleasant pilgrimage with 
horse and saddle-bags to the Midlands, and studied his host 
right well. He told, among other recollections of his visit, how 
the ewes (which were never sold to breeders) were rotted before 
they went to the butcher, by putting them on pastures, over 
which, after May morning, water was always flowing. 
Mr. Bakewell's black cob was as peculiar as himself. He 
always rode with a loose rein, and without whip and spur, and 
if it stopped, he only talked to it. Its tail was his peculiar 
care, and was duly nicked and supported for a time by india- 
rubber bands and pulleys, so as to attain the desired shape and 
elevation. Black cart-horses of the " Old K " sort were nearly 
as much his delight as long-horns and long-wools, but as the 
story went, when he received a summons to show one of them in 
London to George III., his Majesty looked much more at the man 
than the horse. His management of vicious animals was remark- 
ably eflfective. A horse which was sent to him as irreclaimable, 
soon followed him like a dog up and down the Loughborough 
corn-market, and a bull which arrived at Dishley, under the 
escort of six cows and a man on horseback with a nine-foot 
spike, was reduced to submission by a system of starvation. 
* In 18C6. 
