ORIGIN OF FOX-HUXT1NG. 21? 



Looking back at the manner in which fox-hunting has 

 grown up with our habits and customs, and increased in 

 the number of packs, number of hunting days, and 

 number of horsemen, hi full proportion with wealth and 

 population, one cannot help being amused at the sim- 

 plicity with which Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who comes from 

 a country where people seldom amuse themselves out of 

 doors (except in making money), tells in her " Sunny 

 Memories," how, when she dined with Lord John Russell, 

 at Richmond, the conversation turned on hunting ; and 

 she expressed her astonishment " that, in the height of 

 English civilisation, this vestige of the savage state 

 should remain." " Thereupon they only laughed, and 

 told stories about fox-hunters." They might have an- 

 swered with old Gervase Markham, " Of all the field 

 pleasures wherewith Old Time and man's inventions 

 hath blessed the hours of our recreations, there is none 

 so excellent as the delight of hunting, being compounded 

 like an harmonious concert of all the best partes of 

 most refined pleasures, as music, dancing, running and 

 ryding." 



Mrs. Stowe 's distinguished countryman, Washington 

 Irving, took a sounder view of our rural pleasures ; for 

 he says in his charming " Sketch Book :" 



" The fondness for rural life among the higher classes 

 of the English has had a great and salutary effect upon 

 national character. I do not know a finer race of men 

 than the English gentlemen. Instead of the softness 

 and effeminacy which characterizes the men of rank of 

 most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and 

 strength, of robustness of frame and freshness of com- 

 plexion, which I am inclined to attribute to then* living 

 so much in the open air, pursuing so eagerly the invigo- 

 rating recreations of the country." 



