ON HUNTING. 155 



forbid : but every man who keeps a good hack may meet 

 his friends at cover side, enjoy the morning air, with a 

 little pleasant chat, and follow the hounds, if not in the 

 front, in the rear, galloping across pastures, trotting 

 through bridle gates, creeping through gaps, and canter- 

 ing along the green rides of a wood, thus causing a 

 healthy excitement, with no painful reaction ; and if, 

 unhappily, soured or overpressed by work and anxious 

 thoughts, drinking in such draughts of Lethe as can no 

 otherwise be drained. 



Hunting has suffered as much from overpraise as 

 from the traditionary libels of the fribbles and fops of 

 the time of the first Georges, when a fool, a sot, and a 

 fox-hunter were considered synonymous terms. Of late 

 years it has pleased a sportsman, with a wonderful talent 

 for picturesquely describing the events of a fox-hunt, to 

 write two sporting novels, in which all the leading cha- 

 racters are either fools or rogues. 



" In England all conditions of men, except bishops, 

 from ratcatchers to Royalty, are to be found in the 

 hunting-field equalised by horsemanship, and frater- 

 nising under the influence of a genial sport. Among 

 fox-hunters we can trace a long line of statesmen, from 

 William of Orange to Pitt and Fox. Lord Althorp was 

 a master of hounds ; and Lord Palmerston we have seen, 

 within the last few years, going as he goes everywhere 

 in the first flight." This was before the French fall 

 of the late Premier. Cromwell's Ironsides were hunting 

 men ; Pope, the poet, writes in raptures of a gallop with 

 the Wiltshire Harriers ; and Gladstone, theologian, poli- 

 tician, and editor of Homer, bestrides his celebrated 

 white mare in Nottinghamshire, and scurries along by 

 the side of the ex- Wai- Minister, the Duke of Newcastle. 



