The Merry Past 



brics to their noses should they be confronted with 

 the base crew, who, as the author of the famous 

 letters expressed it, " gallopped after a stink." 



As a matter of fact, the old squires incarnated 

 healthy bucolic John Bullism, whilst the exquisites, 

 who drew inspiration from the school of Strawberry 

 Hill, were but cosmopolitan men of pleasure. 



At the end of the eighteenth century and the 

 beginning of the nineteenth a veritable worship of 

 hunting prevailed amongst country gentlemen, many 

 of whom considered riding to hounds the most im- 

 portant thing in the world. 



A certain sporting colonel chose Cambridge for his 

 son, because they made the best saddles and bridles 

 there. 



Another fox-hunter entertained an adverse opinion 

 concerning University education owing to seeing 

 some young men in the hunting field rather shirking 

 their fences. 



" Well, gentlemen," he shouted out, " all I have to 

 tell you is, that if you do not know a good deal more 

 about Latin and Greek than you do about fox-hunting, 

 your parents have sent you to college to confounded 

 little purpose ! " 



Fox-hunting with many was a sort of religion. 



The old Duke of Grafton, with a robust constitu- 

 tion and uninterrupted health, loved ease and sleep of 

 a winter's morning better than the music of the horns 

 and the hounds, yet he thought it necessary for a man 

 of his rank and fortune to be a sportsman and to keep 

 and follow a pack of foxhounds. He therefore ordered 



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