ks at some
fifteen shillings the season was succeeded in the year 1774 by lettings
at a hundred guineas a head; and there were single animals in his flock
from which he is reported to have received, in the height of his fame,
the sum of twelve hundred pounds.

Nor was Bakewell less known for his stock of neat-cattle, for his
judicious crosses, and for a gentleness of management by which he
secured the utmost docility. A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" of
his date says,--"This docility seemed to run through the herd. At an age
when most of his brethren are either foaming or bellowing with rage and
madness, old 'Comely' had all the gentleness of a lamb, both in his look
and action. He would lick the hand of his feeder; and if any one patted
or scratched him, he would bow himself down almost on his knees."

The same writer, describing Mr. Bakewell's hall, says,--"The separate
joints and points of each of the more celebrated of his cattle were
preserved in pickle, or hung up there side by side,--showing the
thickness of the flesh and external fat on each, and the smallness of
the offal. There were also skeletons of the different breeds, that they
might be compared with each other, and the comparative difference
marked."

Arthur Young, in his "Eastern Tour," says, "All his bulls stand still in
the field to be examined; the way of driving them from one field to
another, or home, is by a little switch; he or his men walk by their
side, and guide them with the stick wherever they please; and they are
accustomed to this method from being calves."

He left no book for future farmers to maltreat,--not even so much as a
pamphlet; and the sheep that bore his name are now refined by other
crosses, or are supplanted by the long-woolled troop of
"New-Oxfordshire."

* * * * *

On the way from Leicestershire to London, one passed, in the old
coach-days, through Northampton; and from Northampton it is one of the
most charming of drives for an agriculturist over to the town of
Newport-Pagnell. I lodged there, at the Swan tavern, upon a July night
some twenty years gone; and next morning I rambled over between the
hedge-rows and across meadows to the little village of Weston, where I
lunched at the inn of "Cowper's Oak." The house where the poet had lived
with good Mrs. Unwin was only next door, and its front was quite covered
over with a clambering rose-tree. The pretty waitress of the inn showed