which went with the Lodge. A faded outline of the pleasure grounds, the tangled vestiges of the shrubbery may still be traced. The Master cannot live in his stand on Ascot Heath, and I think he ought to have a habitation where he can take shelter after his inevitable sins of omission and commission as regards the Royal enclosure, that most thorny field of his later-day patronage. Swinley Lodge may have been a little shut-in and wanting in view in

winter-time, but the stately limes, the spangled thorns, the close companionship of the forest and forest sights and sounds must have made it a perfect summer house. A great deal of eating and drinking used to go on at Swinley, and every fourth of June the Master used to give a dinner to all the farmers and foresters. Twice or thrice the Royalty drove over from Windsor and watched the dancing on the green in front of the house. Hunting was expected to

be convivial. Mr. Jenison was honoured as a five-bottle man; Lord Cornwallis was a great host; but Lord Bateman, who held the appointment for twenty-five years, disgusted everybody by a 'penurious sterility' and 'personal pomposity.' Lord Jersey put things right again,' and the public got a Master to their mind at the fall of the Coalition, when Lord Sandwich, who used to take a dice-box out hunting with him and gamble with the Duke of Cumberland in the intervals of the chase, was appointed. We are told the exhilarating steams' of roast sirloin and the vibrating echo of the cork' once more inspired the stag-hunter's prowess, and awakened the long seclusion of Swinley.

And now to come to some of the Masters of more modern days, and a few odds and ends I have been able to pick up about them. Lord Maryborough, afterwards Lord Mornington, was William IV.'s Master of the Buckhounds, and had a very fine seat on a horse. He and the horse he rode were a great feature in the Royal procession, and I have seen an engraving of him leading it on a dappled grey horse which he bought from Mr. Shard, whose classical stag-hunting establishment I have already noticed, for 500 guineas. This is the way to do the thing.

Mr. Charles Greville does not give a good account of the morals of the Royal procession in William IV.'s time. 'His household is now so ill-managed,' he writes at the end of the Ascot week of 1833, that his grooms were drunk every day, and the only man of them who was sober was killed going home from the races!' However, he wrote this in one of his 'video meliora proboque' moods, when he had been eating and drinking too much, sitting up too late, and not

No sportsman now was to the mansion led,
No corks were drawn, no social tables spread,
'Twas blank and dull till Jersey's cheerful light
Dispersed the gloom of long incumbent night.

winning his money. Lord Lichfield, who was appointed Master of the Buckhounds in 1830, lived at Fernhill, and, as D'Orsay was a famous likeness-catcher, he must have been a very good-looking man. His tenure of office was marked by all the agreeable qualities accorded him by Mr. Greville. Upon the whole he comes out with flying colours from the trying ordeal of a special and detailed mention in those fascinating memoirs. He is a fine fellow with an excellent disposition, liberal, hospitable, frank and gay, quick and intelligent. Without cultivation, extravagant and imprudent, yet with considerable aptitude for business. Between spending and speculating, buying property in one place, selling in another, and declining to sell in a third, he has half-ruined a noble estate.' The writer of the article in Baily,' already referred to, says that Davis thought less about the horses than the hounds. Yet some letters of Davis to Lord Lichfield I have seen went into great detail about the horses which he himself and the men had ridden, and the way they had carried them. Lord Lichfield was a great favourite at the kennels, and he rode to hounds very well himself. On that account Davis probably made a point when writing to him of telling him a good deal about the horses.

We now come to some of the Masters of the present reign. Lord Chesterfield was Master at the time of the Queen's coronation. It was a sort of François Ier period of stag-hunting. He dressed himself and mounted his men. and his friends sumptuously. He bought many of his horses of Shirley of Twickenham, the father of the Shirley whose riding Lord Cork commends in a good gallop in the Harrow country, and who at that time kept the Catherine Wheel at Egham. Quite a stud of Lord Chesterfield's horses were kept at the same place, and sent on from there to the meets for his many friends to ride. Dr. Croft writes me: I seem to remember a little about him and his appearance, though I