I should think the best battle he ever fought was in 1826, with a countryman-a Welch miner— who offended him by holloaing the harriers of Mr. Nicholls, of Crumpwell, near Oswestry, to a fresh hare, when they were on the scent of the hunted one, and on the point of killing her after an extraordinary run. The miner told him he would find him "a tough un," which he did; but after twenty rounds he cried, "hold hard, enough." And now appears Mytton in his true character. The hunted hare being eventually killed, he gave the miner ten shillings, told him to go to Halston and get "another bellyfull," and to order the hare to be cooked for dinner that day.

Never was constitution so murdered as Mr. Mytton's was; for, what but one of adamant could have withstood the shocks, independent of wine, to which it was almost daily exposed? His dress alone would have caused the death of nine hundred of a thousand men who passed one part of the day and night in a state of luxury and warmth. We will take him from the sole of his shoe to the crown of his hat. He never wore any but the thinnest and finest silk stockings, with very thin boots or shoes, so that in winter he rarely had dry feet. To flannel he was a stranger, since he left off his petticoats. Even his hunting

breeches were without lining; he wore one small waistcoat, always open in the front from about the second of the lower buttons; and about home he was as often without his hat as with one. His winter shooting gear was a light jacket, white linen trousers, without lining or drawers, of which he knew not the use; and in frost and snow he waded through all water that came in his way. Nor is this all. He would sometimes strip to his shirt to follow wild-fowl in hard weather, and once actually laid himself down on the snow in his shirt only to wait their arrival at dusk. But Dame Nature took offence at this, and chastised him rather severely for his daring. On one occasion, however, he outheroded Herod, for he followed some ducks "in puris naturalibus"-anglice, stark-naked-on the ice,1 and escaped with perfect impunity. He was the only man I ever knew who I think, at one time of his life, might have stood some chance of performing the grand Osbaldeston match over Newmarket, from the ease with which he performed immense distances on the road on his hacks. When his hounds hunted the Albrighton country (Staffordshire) he used to ride, several times in the week, to covers nearly fifty miles

1 This occurred at Woodhouse, the seat of his uncle, who related the story to me in London, the circumstance having occurred since I last visited Shropshire.

distant from Halston, and return thither to his dinner. Indeed he has been known to do it for some days successively. Neither could any man I ever met in the field walk through the day with him, at his pace. I saw him, on his own moors in Merionethshire, completely knock up two keepers (who accompanied him alternately), being the whole day bare-headed under a hot sun. (One of these keepers -whom I procured for him in Cheshire—was rather a crack walker, and a noted man with his fists.) He had the stomach of an ostrich before it was debilitated by wine, and even against that it stood nearly proof to the last, but it appears he once met with his match. Himself and a friend left London together with eighteen pounds of filbert-nuts in his carriage, and they devoured them all before they arrived at Halston. To use his own words, they sat up to their knees in nut-shells. But it was often alarming to witness the quantity of dry nuts he would eat, with the quantity of port wine which he would drink ; and on my once telling him at his own table that the ill-assorted mixture caused the death of a schoolfellow of mine,1 he carried a dish of filberts

1 When mentioning this fact, I was quite unconscious that General Williams, who was present, was brother to the youth I alluded to. "You are speaking of a brother of mine," said the General. "Volat irrevocabile

verbum;" I had nothing left but to apologize.