"The covert side knew him no more after the October of 1857, when he just cantered up to Willbury on his chestnut hack Blemish, to see his hounds draw. Carter got his orders to bring the choicest of the 1858 entry, and he and Will Bryce arrived at the usual rendezvous with five couple of bitches by the Fitzwilliam Hardwicke and Hermit. He looked at them a short time, and exclaimed, 'Well, they're as beautiful as they can be,' bade both his men good-bye, and they saw him no more."
He returned to Tedworth as usual—
"But," writes Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "at the annual meet on the 1st of November, 1857, the hounds met without the accustomed centre figure of their master, who slowly rode up to them without his scarlet. He remarked, quite seriously, that if he had worn his hunting gear, and his pack should observe that he could not follow them, they would show their sorrow by refusing to hunt the fox. A universal gloom pervaded the field; he looked wistfully and lovingly at his old favourites, the heroes of many a well-fought field; and as he quickly went back into the hall, shrinking almost from the outer air, while the horsemen and pack turned away slowly towards the shrubberies, every one felt with a heavy heart that the glory of the old fox-hunter had at length departed."
The state of Mrs. Smith's health having for many years caused her husband great anxiety, in 1845, in order, as he said, "to bring Madeira to England," he constructed for her at Tedworth a magnificent conservatory or crystal palace, 315 feet in length and 40 in width, in which, enjoying the temperature of a warm climate, she might take walking exercise during the winter months. A Wiltshire farmer, on first seeing this building, observed, he supposed it was for the 'Squire to hunt there whenever a frost stopped him in the field.
"It was a melancholy spectacle," writes Sir J. Eardley Wilmot, "to see Tom Smith the winter before his death, when he could no longer join his hounds, mount one of his favourite hunters—Euxine, Paul Potter, or Blemish—with the assistance of a chair, and take his exercise for an hour at a foot's pace up and down this conservatory, often with some friend at his side to cheer him up and while away the time until he re-entered the house, for he was not allowed at that period to go out of doors. Even in this feeble condition, 'quantùm mutatus ab illo Hectore,' once on horseback, he appeared to revive; and the dexterity and ease with which he managed, like a plaything, the spirited animal under him, which had scarcely left its stable for months, was most surprising."
During the last days of his existence he rested rather than took exercise on that noble animal the horse, which for seventy years he had so resolutely and yet so considerately governed. His mind, in its declining hours, had also its support. Throughout his life, without ostentation and often in secret, he had been charitable to people of various conditions. Of the two thousand workmen in his quarries, scarcely one of them had ever been taken before a magistrate for dishonesty. Never was he known, if properly requested, to refuse to give a site for a church or even for a Dissenting chapel. Both he and Mrs. Smith invariably went to church on foot, it being a rule with them never, except in case of illness, to have either carriage or horse out on Sundays.
A few weeks after he had completed his eighty-second year he had a sudden attack of the same symptoms which had shaken him so severely in 1856. In a moment of consciousness, evidently aware of his approaching end, pointing to his faithful valet, he said to his devoted wife, "Take care of that man!" and when Mrs. Smith left the room, he said to her maid, "Watch over your mistress; take care of her." A few hours afterwards—
"Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history"—
on the 9th of September, 1858, while Mrs. Smith's sister was watching by his bedside, a slight change came over his countenance, but before the doctors or even his valet could be summoned,—with a gentle sigh expired Thomas Assheton Smith, bequeathing, on half a sheet of writing-paper, the whole of his vast possessions, producing from 50,000l. to 55,000l. a year, to his widow (who survived him only a few months); and moreover leaving behind him a name that will long be remembered not only by the farmers and riding men of the counties he hunted, but by all who are disposed fairly and justly to appreciate the lights and shadows which constitute the character of "The English Country Gentleman," one only of whose recreations we have endeavoured to delineate to our readers in the foregoing slight sketches of those three gallant animals—the Horse, the Fox, and last, though not least, the Foxhunter.