216 ORIGIN OF FOX-HUNTING. 



But the change to fast hounds, fast horses, and fast 

 men, took place at a much more distant date than some 

 of our hard-riding young swells of 1854 seem to ima- 

 gine. A portrait of a celebrated hound, Ringwood, at 

 Brocklesby Park, painted by Stubbs, the well-known 

 animal painter in 1792, presents in an extraordinary 

 manner the type and character of some of the best 

 hounds remotely descended from him, although the 

 Cheshire song says : 



" When each horse wore a crupper, each squire a pigtail, . 

 Ere Blue Cap and Wanton taught greyhounds to scurry, 

 With music in plenty oh, where was the hurry ? " 



But it is more than eighty years since Blue Cap and 

 Wanton ran their race over Newmarket Heath, which 

 for speed has never been excelled by any modern hounds. 



And it is a curious fact, that although Somerville, the 

 author of The Chase, died in 1742, his poem contains as 

 clear and correct directions for fox-hunting, with few ex- 

 ceptions, as if it were written yesterday. So that the 

 art must have arrived at perfection within sixty or 

 seventy years. In the long reign of George III. the 

 distinction bewteen town and country was much broken 

 down, and the isolation in which country squires lived 

 destroyed. Packs of hounds, kept for the amusement 

 of a small district, became, as it were, public property. 

 At length the meets of hounds began to be regularly 

 given in the country newspapers. 



With every change sportsmen of the old school have 

 prophesied the total ruin of fox-hunting. Eoads and 

 canals excited great alarm to our fathers. In our time 

 every one expected to see sport entirely destroyed by- 

 railroads ; but we were mistaken, and have lived to con- 

 sider them almost an essential auxiliary of a good hunt- 

 ing district. 



