ENGLISH HUNTERS AND AMERICAN TROTTERS. 43 



costly appointmonts of every kind to accommodate some fifty or an hun- 

 dred coujjle of high-bred hounds, whose pedigrees are as well preserved as 

 those of Priam or Long waist ; and a wide district of country is reserved 

 and assigned exclusively to each hunt. Fox-hunting is there termed par 

 excellence, a princely amusement, and gentlemen of the most exalted rank 

 and largest fortune, take pride in the office of ''Master of the liounds,^' and 

 assuredly in all the wide field of manly exercises, none can compare with 

 an English fox or steeple-chase, for union of athletic vigor and daring skill, 

 and magnificence of equitation; unless perhaps it were some splendid 

 charge de cavalrie, like those we used to read of, made by the gallant 

 MuRAT at a critical moment of the battle, when he was wont, in his gor- 

 geous uniform and towering plumes, to fall with his cavalry like an ava- 

 lanche upon his adversary, confounding and crushing him at a blow ! 

 Truly, it would well be worth a trip across the Atlantic, to see a single 

 " turn out" of an English hunt, all in their fair tops, buckskin smalls, and 

 scarlet coats, mounted on hunters that under Tattersall's hammer would 

 command from one to two hundred guineas ! Imagine such a field with 

 thirty couple of staunch hounds, heads up and sterns down, all in full cry, 

 and well away with then- fox ! ! 



■NoAV, my brave youths, 



Flourish the whip, nor spare the galling spur ; 

 But in the madness of delight, forget 

 Your fears. Far o'er the rocky hills we range, 

 And dangerous our course ; but in the brave 

 True courage never fails." 



To indicate more strongly the prevalence of this partiality for trotting- 

 horses, and emulation to own the fiistest goer, and the number and extent 

 of associations and arrangements for this sort of trial and amusement, it 

 need only be mentioned that the " Spirit of the Times," published in New 

 York, contains lists of matches and purses, and of thousands on thousands 

 of dollars in small purses, won and lost on these };erformances on trotting 

 courses! These performances show that the excel' etice which is conceded 

 to American trotters, is not founded on a solitary achievement or very rare 

 cases, nor to be ascribed to the possession of any distinct and peculiar breed 

 of horses ; but is the natural and common fruit of that union of blood and 

 bone, which forms proverbially the desideratum in a good hunter, with the 

 superaddition of skilful training, much practice, and artful jockeying, for 

 the trotting course. Who can doubt that if Hiram Woodruff were to go to 

 England, having the run of their hunting-stables, he might select nags 

 enough which could soon be made, under his training and consummate 

 jockeyship, to go along with Edwin Forrest and Lady Suffolk, Ripton, 

 llattler. Confidence, and the Dutchman ?" 



