156 ON HUNTING. 



" The progress of agriculture is indelibly associated 

 with fox-hunting ; for the three great landlords, who did 

 more to turn sand and heath into corn and wool, and 

 make popular the best breeds of stock and best course 

 of cultivation Francis, Duke of Bedford ; Coke, Earl 

 of Leicester ; and the first Lord Yarborough were all 

 masters of hounds. 



"When indecency formed the staple of our plays, and 

 a drunken debauch formed the inevitable sequence of 

 every dinner-party, a fool and a fox-hunter were syno- 

 nymous. Squire Western was the representative of a 

 class, which, however, was not more ridiculous than 

 the patched, perfumed Sir Plumes, whom Hogarth 

 painted, and Pope satirised. Fox-hunters are not a class 

 now roads, newspapers, and manufacturing emigration 

 have equalised the condition of the whole kingdom ; and 

 fox-hunters are just like any other people, who wear 

 clean shirts, and can afford to keep one or more horses. 

 . " It is safe to assert that hunting-men, as a class, are 

 temperate. No man can ride well across a difficult 

 country who is riot. We must, however, admit that the 

 birds who have most fouled their own nest have been 

 broken-down sportsmen, chiefly racing men, who have 

 turned writers to turn a penny. These unfortunate 

 people, with the fatal example of ' Noctes Ambrosianae ' 

 before them, fill up a page, whenever their memory or 

 their industry fails them, in describing in detail a break- 

 fast, a luncheon, a dinner, and a supper. And this has 

 been repeated so often, that the uninitiated are led to 

 believe that every fox-hunter must, as a matter of course, 

 keep a French cook, and consume an immense cellar of 

 port, sherry, madeira, hock, champagne, with gallons of 

 strong ale, and all manner of liqueurs. 



