He had long hunted Featherbedfordshire in a style of great magnificence, and though latterly his energies had perhaps been as much devoted to the pursuit of the fair as the fox, yet, as he found the two worked well together, he kept up the hunting establishment with all the splendour of his youth. Not that he was old: as he would say, “_far from it!_” Indeed, to walk behind him down St. James’s Street (he does not go quite so well up), his easy jaunty air, tall graceful figure, and elasticity of step, might make him pass for a man in that most uncertain period of existence the “prime of life,” and if uncivil, unfriendly, inexorable time has whitened his pow, his lordship carries it off with the aid of gay costume and colour. He had a great reputation among the ladies, and though they all laughed and shook their heads when his name was mentioned, from the pretty simpering Mrs. Ringdove, of Lime-Tree Grove, who said he was a “naughty man,” down to the buxom chambermaid of the Rose and Crown, who giggled and called him a “gay old gentleman,” they all felt pleased and flattered by his attentions. Hunting a country undoubtedly gives gay old gentlemen great opportunities, for, under pretence of finding a fox, they may rummage any where from the garret[1] to the cellar. [1] Ex. gra., As we say in the classics. “A Fox Run into a Lady’s Dressing-Room.—The Heythrop hounds met at Ranger’s Lodge, within about a mile of Charlbury, found in Hazell Wood, and went away through Great Cranwell, crossing the park of Cornbury, on by the old kennel to Live Oak, taking the side hill, leaving Leafield (so celebrated for clay-pipes) to his left, crossed the bottom by Five Ashes; then turned to the right, through King’s Wood. Smallstones, Knighton Copse, over the plain to Ranger’s Lodge, with the hounds close at his brush, where they left him in a mysterious manner. After the lapse of a little time he was discovered by a maid- servant in the ladies’ dressing-room, from which he immediately bolted on the appearance of the petticoats, without doing the slightest damage to person or property."—Bell’s Life. What a gentlemanly fox!