fell into hysterics, and finally sent for my
uncle.

My uncle was not taken by surprise; but
set out at once, and took me with him. We
rode his two Norfolk cobs, presents from Lord
Holkham. The family physician, Dr. Fleme,
had been sent for: also Sir Albert Debonair,
from London; but Dr. Fleme was attending
the Duchess, and Sir Albert was at Brighton,
waiting for a bow from royalty; so, I felt the
Countess's pulse; and, with much trepidation,
made up, on my uncle's suggestion, a prescription
consisting chiefly of sugar, hot water,
and old Cognac. Then I retired.

My uncle listened to the Dowager's mingled
fears for her son's soul and body; for the
Countess fancied a fox hunt was next door to
an hospital; not dreaming that the Earl and
his tutor had been pretty regular attendants
on the Jennyton harriers for the previous
three seasons. He then gently insinuated
that, as the young lord unfortunately took
after his father instead of his mother, and was
consequently obstinate, and would be of age
in a year, and might then object to certain
liberties that her ladyship had taken with the
estates, perhaps it would be better to let him
have his own way. He mentioned the case of
young Lord Modbury, who married the dairymaid
to spite his father, because he would not
let him go to Paris; and the Honourable
Mr, Eton who went to London and lost forty
thousand pounds at the oyster club, because
Lady Eton objected to his four-in-hand:
with many other anecdotes of a like nature.
Finally, he advised that the Black Oak
Grange, the best house on the Blankshire
estate, should be fitted up and filled with a
carefully selected staff of servants, and a stud
of first-rate hunters, and that her ladyship
should withdraw all objections, on condition
that his lordship took with him a resident
medical attendant. To this conclusion, not
without much sighing and sobbing, and pious
ejaculations, her ladyship came at length;
and this was the way in which I, Adam
Mufleigh, who always had the strongest
objection to anything beyond nine miles an
hour, came to be the medical and daily
companion of a fox-hunting Earl! Ah, me! The
thought of what I have had to do, in my
time, even now makes me tremble all over
with goose's flesh as I sit in my morocco
arm-chair, and enjoy the fruits of early
hardships upon pigskin.

The Dowager took a fancy to me from the
moment she saw me trotting up the avenue—
for, as she flatteringly observed, "He rides
so badly, he is not likely to lead dear Reginald
into mischief."

It was October when this occurred. Down
we went into Blankshire, and took possession
of Black Oak Grange, a curious old-fashioned
house, which was already scrubbed, warmed,
and ventilated, with a corps of the ugliest
maidens I ever beheld together. In this
house I passed four seasons, and met with
many adventures; of which one will be
enough for the present.

The Blankshire hounds hunted over one of
those old-fashioned squirearchal districts,
where good fat land, rude cultivation, old
families of moderately independent means, and
the absence of mines and manufactories, as
well as of roads leading to any important town,
combined to nourish in great perfection all
those John Bull prejudices which railroads
and high-farming have done much to
extinguish. Pigtails, top-boots and buckskins,
four-horse coaches, postillions and outriders,
county assemblies, minuets and cotillions, had
their last stronghold in Blankshire. The
county families seldom travelled to London;
even the county members had perpetual leave
of absence. The peers who had estates in the
county rarely visited them, and if they came
for shooting, came as strangers. Manufacturers
were looked on and talked of, much
as Southern planters talk of niggers. No
professional man, except one favourite M.D.,
had ever been admitted to the Blankshire
assemblies, held in the rooms of the chief inn
—the Bullrush Arms—in a decayed cathedral
town, where the squires had town houses, and
spent a portion of the year (including hard
frosts) in a series of dinners and whist-parties
with the rosy, port-loving prebends of the
old school.

The Blankshire Hounds had been a
subscription pack from time immemorial, and
had grown imperceptibly from badger and
hare-hounds, to fox-hounds. There was a
club, and a club uniform, which it is not
necessary to describe, although it might fill a
few pages for some fashionable sporting
writers—at any rate, the whole club and
county believed this costume to be perfection,
and the utmost possible contempt was
felt and shown for any stranger who varied
a hair's breadth or a shade from the cut
of the clothes or the colour of the tops, of
the Blankshire Club. It was the rule of
the Blankshire Club that no one appearing
in the field should be spoken to unless
he was introduced. "Foreigners," that is,
persons not belonging to the county, were
especial objects of dislike; and, at various
times, the sons of rich merchants and
manufacturers, who had been tempted to bring
their studs over hundreds of miles of bad
roads, by reports of the famous sport among
the oxen-feeding pastures of Blankshire, were
signally routed, in spite of their first-rate
hunters and Meltonian costume, by the
combined contempt and studied insults of the old
squires and sporting parsons. Gates shut in
their faces, loud laughter at mishaps, frequent
misdirections, and unmistakeable signs that
they were not wanted, generally caused a
speedy retreat. In fact, as Squire Thicked
observed in a loud whisper to Parson Bowan,
"They didn't want any interlopers, showing
off their airs and their horses." And it is a
curious fact, that these gentlemen of the old