408 mines of tbe 1bunting«3fielb 



with her reception and the sport shown her, that she re- 

 peated her visit in the following year. She was immensely 

 popular. Bonfires blazed in her honour. The Press 

 sent special reporters to chronicle her doings, and yet, 

 with it all, there was no unseemly mobbing. The free- 

 dom from restraint, the absence of all the pomp, and 

 pageantry, and ceremony, which had bored her to death in 

 the English Shires was delightful to her, and she always 

 declared that her happiest hunting days were spent in 

 Ireland with the Meath, where men and women yet 

 remember with admiration how she sailed like a bird 

 over those glorious grass lands in the wake of her gallant 

 pilot, * Bay ' Middleton. 



Since the foregoing passage was written, and whilst 

 these pages are going to press, the news of the Empress's 

 assassination has fallen like a thunderbolt on society. 

 And none, outside her own country, have felt the blow 

 more keenly than her many Irish friends who loved her 

 as much for her winsome ways as they admired her for 

 her beauty and daring. Some, who did not appreciate 

 the finished art of her riding, thought she was a reckless 

 horsewoman. * She was never that,' writes one who 

 has often seen her ride to hounds. ' Nor have I seen 

 any trace of jealousy in her style of riding when other 

 women were going well to the front. It vv^ould have 

 been strange in one of her sex, conscious of being well 

 mounted and in all respects equipped for successful 

 rivalry, if she had not tried to be with them, but I 

 always thought in such moments that she rode with 

 more judgment and a quieter determination than when, 

 carried away by enthusiasm, she led a whole field.' 



The Empress's love of horses was remarkable. She 

 visited the stables every day to see that her hunters 



