Page:The Earl of Mayo.djvu/70

62 his five years, and at least thirty others rehabilitated. 'In fact,' writes a Kildare gentleman, 'the whole country was re-made during Lord Naas' Mastership, through his personal exertions, and by means of the great enthusiasm which he created among his supporters.' Before he gave up the hounds, in 1862, he had placed the hunt on such a basis as to warrant the expenditure being fixed at £1900 a year, and to enable his successor to hunt seven days a fortnight from the first.

'As Master of the Kildare hounds,' writes one of his brother sportsmen, 'Naas had a good deal against him in his public capacity as a politician, with the farmers and others; but his innate goodness of heart, his thorough love of Ireland and Irishmen, and his wondrous enthusiasm for sport, soon made him loved by all who knew him. There are many farmers who have not hunted since his time, and he made many a man hunt who never thought of it before. He was never once in a field without knowing it ever afterwards, and how to get out of it. He remembered every fence in the country; and one day, having lost his watch in a run, he next day walked over the ground, part of which he had crossed alone, and found it. He reckoned that the greatest compliment paid to him while Master was by the farmers of the Maynooth country. One of them gave the land, and they all turned out with men and horses, and made a stick covert for him in a single day. Nothing ever gratified him more. But, indeed, there were men in