names and dealt with in a very off-hand and summary manner by our forefathers, who had a knack of nailing a fellow's ear to the pump or putting him in the pillory; and that, amongst the lower orders, had people on the slightest provocation drawn a knife and stuck their fellow-men as they do now daily-which crime I take the liberty of calling by its proper name, 'wilful murder '-they would have gone in the cart to Tyburn, and I only wish they were so treated now. Mitcham, October 1877. F. G.

'Give me a Montem with all its tomfoolery-I had almost said before a 'coronation -and even without the aids of a Périgord pie and a bottle of claret at 'the Windmill.'-Knight's Quarterly Magazine, vol. i., pp. 197 and 198.

MANY a veteran's eye will brighten up as he reads the familiar words which head the present article, many a recollection of happy days passed within the shadows of what Gray sung as

'Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,
That crown the wat❜ry glade'

will arise to memory. Freaks and frolics around that Mons Sacer that had descended from the ages of darkness, when monks and priests were the only representatives of learning, but which were abolished ere some who have now reached middle age can well remember, will pass in review like the visions in Macbeth.' Other thoughts, too, will haply arise with them, as with us, when we take what may prove to be a farewell ramble round the well-known spot, for Botham's, of which Salthill is part and parcel, has passed the auctioneer's hammer, run the gauntlet of Tokenhouse Yard, and what its fate may be the outside public have as yet to learn. Perchance the place so charged with old and happy memories may be pulled down, become a madhouse or an hospital, the Mons Sacer itself figure under an ornamental shrubbery in a snug citizen's villa garden, and every old association be swept away before the march of time and some speculative builder. We feel sure that many a reader of 'Baily' will thank us for devoting a few pages to the theme. Tradition will take us back a long way as we look at the old red-brick mansion, its front now in the glorious summer weather covered with the bloom of the Westeria, which, like a giant of the forest, spreads its shade before it, and the gay scarlet geraniums and nasturtiums climbing each pillar of the verandah to meet it. The proprietor, who was born in the old house, and there breathed his last in the first month of the present year, inherited it from his father, and proud he must have been of such an inheritance! How much farther it went back in the family, deponent sayeth not; but how great

the change that came over the spirit of the place in that one life! It is almost incredible, spread out though it was five years beyond the allotted span of man. Here he must have seen the good king 'Farmer George' come to open the season at Salthill with his buckhounds, and what a contrast to a modern meet must it not have been. Then all order and decorum, in fact we may say state, for this chase was reserved for the especial amusement of the king. We can see it all in our mind's eye: the garden opposite, with its fine old trees draped in the tints of autumn, the expectant crowd, Sharp, the huntsman, with his grand pack of lemon and white staghounds around him-such hounds as the present generation know not, for the last of them were sold at Tattersall's and went abroad in 1828, though at the day we write of there were three packs in England, the Royal Buckhounds, Colonel Mellish's, who hunted wild deer in Epping and Hainault forests, and the Devon and Somerset on Exmoor, and, we believe, a few packs in Ireland. Grand hounds they were, and, in spite of what people now say, could go the pace when there was a scent. The yeoman prickers in their scarlet and gold liveries are there; and last, not least, we see the kind-hearted, if wrong-headed, old king come up and mount his clever fifteen-hand hunter; then the whole move off, and are lost to view, even, perchance, as the place itself soon shall be, for

'Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb.'

Yet another vision rises, and scarlet must be still our theme, though the king is departed and his old style of hounds, horses, and men are gone with him. The fourth George has changed all that, and the familiar meet sees Charles Davis, the neatest of horsemen and most gentlemanly of huntsmen, trot up on Hermit, The Traverser, or some other flyer that could hold his own across Leicestershire itself, and from fifteen to eighteen couples of foxhounds round him, lightheaded, fine-drawn, and fast as greyhounds. There are none of the old sort now, with their heavy ears and voices like the peal of an organ, for a Chesterfield, a Bessborough, or an Errol reigns. But what a field is there! D'Orsay, you may be sure, Sir George Wombwell, the late Duke of Beaufort, Lord Alvanley, Lord Adolphus FitzClarence, Lord Forester, Lord Cardigan, Lord Pembroke, Lord Clanricarde, Harvey Ashton, Col. Anson, Capt. Tollemache, Johnny Bushe, Col. Bulby, Learmouth, Crofts, et hoc genus omne. must gallop and jump if you would see the best of them when the deer is taken. Neither must we forget Rob Roy, a celebrated Salthill character in Davis's time, who was pretty well sure to fill the Reading hostelries with tired horses and hungry men, when turned out. Once more our vision changes, and Frank Goodall is there; what an alteration in those who come to meet him— publicans, butchers, hell-keepers or worse, pretty horse-breakers, and such a miscellaneous crowd as London and easy railway accommodation now send to meet the Queen's. The late Mr. Botham had few hunting men at his house of late years; he cared but little save to

You

see old and well-known customers, and, after the changes he must have lived through, who can wonder at it? Fancy the men who were there in his prime, and the men who would send horses on there now! We will, in mercy to our readers, drop the veil, and not let our mind revert to what a Salthill meet is in the present day. Let us rather linger for a while longer with the old king and Queen Charlotte, adding largely to the fund that Montem saw collected, or giving the boys what no doubt was irreverently termed a good blow-out within those walls, even if her Majesty did object to the kicking operation down the hill-nay, all their successors have honoured the institution with their presence, down to our gracious Queen. Here, also, in the beginning of the century, came 'The Four Horse Club,' which was established one year after the B.D.C., or Benson Driving Club, under the auspices of a very scientific coachman, Mr. Charles Buxton, inventor of the Buxton bit. Some of the other members were: Lord Hawke (whose head terret was a spécialité); Sir Felix Agar, who drove his coach for a wager with Mr. Ackers, another member, in and out of Tattersall's yard and around the fox in a trot; had either horse dropped into a walk the wager would have been lost, and it is wonderful that they did not. The bet was a dinner to a large party, and Mr. Ackers had to pay. Sir Bellingham Graham, Sir Godfrey Webster, Mr. Martin Hawke, Mr. M'Quin, Mr. H. Butler, Capt. Murray, Mr. Sherrard, Major Peliew, Lord Clinton, Mr. Paul Methuen, Sir J. Johnstone, Mr. Harrison, Sir J. Broughton, Sir C. Bamfylde, Mr. Osbaldeston, who drove a canary-coloured coach, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Stephen Atkinson. Their first meeting was held in April 1808, and they met every first and third Thursday in May and June at the house of their president in Cavendish Square, and drove to Salthill to dinner alternately at the Windmill and the Castle, and each house took in the horses that the other could not accommodate. Mr. Buxton, if present, always presided at the dinner-table, and Sir John Rogers acted as vice. If these members were absent, Lord Hawke and his brother, Mr. Martin Hawke, acted for them. No strangers were admitted. Luncheon for thirty was always laid out at the Packhorse, Turnham Green, with cider cup made with hock and borage; and the same at the Magpies at Hounslow Heath, eight miles farther down the road. Here, also, the horses were watered, but they ran the ground to Salthill and back the next day without being taken out of their harness-the distance twenty-four miles from Cavendish Square. The number of teams was generally a dozen, and each dragsman had an honorary member on his bench. The club ceased to exist somewhere about 1826, or thirty years before the present Four-in-Hand Club came into existence. But it is time we got inside the house, and tried its hospitality while we may, and we venture to say that it would be impossible to find anywhere a better illustration still extant of the inn of the old coaching and posting days, when people really took their ease in

their inn, and, if they paid somewhat dearly for it, had comfort; when your inn was your home for the time being, and all connected with it took an interest in your comfort; when it was possible to get a bottle of good wine and a well-cooked dinner. Such was the Windmill, more familiarly known as Botham's; and what a contrast, in every sense of the word, to the caravansaries which in the present day do duty as hotels, where the manager, as a rule, thinks it a condescension to speak to you; the barmaid (we beg pardon, young lady who is reading a novel in the bar) answers any question addressed to her with a languid air of surprise that you could have the audacity to bother her with anything of such little importance as matters concerning yourself, and you get bad wine at a high price and a dinner composed of mongrel kind of dishes, neither French nor English, but probably combining the worst features of both.

It

Every coach and every post-chaise which left London early by the Bath Road breakfasted at Salthill, either at the Windmill, or a little way farther on, at the Castle, on the opposite side of the road, which has now for years been a private house. Besides the coach changes-and from seventy to eighty stopped hereit is said, we believe, that seventy pairs of post-horses were kept in the stables, and no less than one hundred cows to supply the establishment with milk. Perchance the pump was not used so much in those days. Although the coaches have now left the road for many years, the posting business lingered for a time, and the proprietor, loving his inheritance, as well he might, bravely kept on the old inn, supported by many who had known the place in its palmy days. is strange to wander through the great house (they could make up thirty-five beds) and look into rooms still containing the furniture with which the late proprietor commenced life-old prints which, if they could speak, would have strange tales to tell. In a word, any one knowing the then could revive it in the now were he to revisit the place. He would be puzzled to find any other alteration indoors save the ominous stillness. Breakfasts and dinners were bustling affairs in those old coaching and posting days. But let us revisit the yard, and what a sad change we find. Here the enormous amount of stabling is mostly in ruins. Where seventy pairs of posters stood, one horse, and one alone, is found to do the present fly-work of the establishment. Wandering through the old yard, we came upon a coach-house wherein stood five carriages, which had evidently not been moved for many years. So quaint was their build, they would puzzle and delight the antiquary; and what a story Charles Dickens would have woven from them! There, no doubt, they will stay until the day (perhaps ere this is bound within the green cover it may be over) when they see the light once more beneath the auctioneer's hammer. In another coach-house was about two waggon-loads of old posting harness, with some postboys' jackets, covered with dust and in every stage of decay. Ascending a staircase, we entered the sleeping-rooms allotted to the postilions; there in rows were the low bedsteads, the canvas

moth-eaten, an old lantern lying probably just where it had been thrown after use for the last time years before, and the rooms, save for dust and decay, the same as their occupants left them for ever. Yet more strongly were we to be reminded of old times, for in the stables was a team of coach-horses-a rare good team, too-every one just the sort of horse that fifty years ago we should have expected to open the stable door upon; and a pair of carriage-horses, both belonging to vehicles which had come from London, each bound for their destination farther west. Then what memories were recalled when, later on, we saw that same team start from the inn door; it was something to do a sexagenarian's heart good-the coach of the oldfashioned sort, one that looked like what we were taught to consider a coach years ago, and not of the modern order, which is now styled a drag; something with a business, workmanlike look about it, as there was about the servant who brought it round, and by the way he took his place behind as it moved off we at once set him down as a professional; we fancy, had the turn-out stood in the bygone days with others at the door, it would have passed unnoticed as a member of the same large family. Now it was refreshing to look upon it and form a mental comparison with those we so often see in the Park and elsewhere. We prefer a coach to a drag any day; but then we plead guilty to having entered the realms of Fogeydom.

A comparatively young man took possession of the bench, with a lady by his side, and another with a gentleman was on the gammon board; he drove quietly off, walking his horses (a bay mare at off, and white-legged chestnut gelding, all over a hunter, at near lead, a long, low, dark chestnut gelding at off wheel, and white-legged bay at near) into their collars; and wishing him godspeed, and a continuation of the ways he was so prudently pursuing-ways which spoke of prudent counsel followed, for he must indeed have been well advised- -a turn of the road hid him from our view. Soon after the carriage appeared at the door and departed, and the owner must have been, like ourselves, revisiting a place with which probably he was familiar in his youth. And pleasant it was to note that the manageress and waiter stood at the door on each occasion to speed the parting guest.

Our ramble is not yet done, for across the road is the grand old garden to explore, with its velvet turf, pleasant walks, trees ancient of days, and, above all, that summer-house where many a name famous in the world's history is carved or written, and which the Eton boys would never suffer Botham to touch, beyond having it re-thatched. It would have taken an age to write all the names of note therein inscribed; and we must admit that, beyond Rous and Wombwell, we searched in vain for those of celebrity in the sporting world. Above all did we look for John Musters and Assheton Smith, the heroes of that Homeric battle which will be remembered while foxhunting lasts in England, as the hardest ever fought at Eton, and to which Mr. Smith to his latest years used to attribute his want of good looks, by saying' That fellow Jack Musters spoilt all my beauty

VOL. XXXI.-NO. 212.

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