,,36           SScof and Sebrig-/zi.

,7.am," and wvell he kept his word. For upwards of
forty years did that son keep a pack nearly at his own
expense, and infuse a M\Ieynellian freshness into
Northern hunting such as it had never known before.
After the death of James Shelly, who came as hunts-
man to Lambton Park, with the Talbot pack (which
were of Vernon, or rather Meynell blood), Mr. Lamb-
ton always hunted them himself, until he was in his
seventieth year, when The Kitten fell with him in the
middle of a grass field near Long Newton, and lite-
rally broke his back. He had injured the vertebrxe
in I825, and madt matters no better by a second fall,
but there was no hope now, and for six years and four
months he faced without a murmur all the weariness
of a sick room, with the calm heroism so peculiarly
his own. A harder man or finer rider has scarcely
ever crossed a country. Once or twice he was picked
up for dead, when he had been riding some raw four-
year-old; and at last Mr. George Baker of Elemore
became so impressed with the belief of his having
an invulnerable body, that he would not hear of his
being called an iron man, but carried the comparison
a point further to " those stub heads they make gun-
barrels of."
His Habits of  He was a remarkably high-bred man,
    Life,  in his look and address, and sat in Par-
liament several years for Durham. Boodle's wvas his
great resort when in town, but with the exception of
a few weeks in the season, he was rarely absent from
his hounds for a day. Few were more abstemious
and sparing in their diet, and he used to tell young
sportsmen, " You'll be lucky if you've no more dinner-
bag at my age." He touched nothing from breakfast
till dinner, and rarely tasted any liquid but wvine. It
vas his boast that he was never hungry or thirsty in
his life. He always kept his weight eleven-four to
within a pound, and barring his grey head, he stripped
quite young at sixty. Such a Nestor, in the field or