HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS. 95 



had the effect of bringing men together, and of establishing all 

 over the country new fox-hunting centres. Hunting wants 

 money, and railways have brought men with money to the spots 

 at which they were needed. They have, so to speak, placed the 

 hunting-field at the very doors of the dwellers in town. In 

 London a man may breakfast at home, have four or five hours' 

 hunting fifty miles away from the metropolitan chimney-pots, 

 and find himself seated at his domestic mahogany for a seven 

 o'clock dinner. Nor is it necessary for the inhabitant of London 

 to go such a distance to secure an excellent day's hunting. To 

 say nothing of her Majesty's staghounds, there are first-rate packs 

 in Surrey, Essex, and Kent, all within a railway journey of an 

 hour. Here again the inveterate laudator temporis acti will 

 declare he discerns greater ground for dissatisfaction than con- 

 gratulation. He will tell you that in consequence of those con- 

 founded steam-engines the field gets flooded by cockneys who 

 can't ride, who mob the covert, and effectually prevent the fox 

 from breaking. Of course it is indisputable that railways have 

 familiarised men who never hunted previously with horses and 

 with hounds, and that persons now venture upon the chase whose 

 forefathers may have scarcely known to distinguish between a 

 dog and a horse. Very likely, moreover, it would be much 

 better for fox-hunting if a fair proportion of these new-comers 

 had never presented themselves in this, their new, capacity. At 

 the same time, with the quantity of the horsemen, there has been 

 some improvement also in the quality of the horsemanship. 

 Leech's typical cockney Nimrod may not have yet become 

 extinct, but he is a much rarer specimen of sporting humanity 

 than was formerly the case. 



It is a great thing for all Englishmen that hunting should 

 have received this new development among us, and for the simple 

 reason that salutary as is the discipline of all field sports, that 

 of hunting is so in the most eminent degree. ' Ride straight to 

 hounds and talk as little as possible,' was the advice given by a 

 veteran — our old friend Sir Cloudesley Spanker for instance — to 

 a youngster who was discussing the secret mode in which popu- 

 larity was to be secured ; and the sententious maxim contains 

 a great many grains of truth. Englishmen admire performance, 

 and without it they despise words. Performance is the only 

 thing which in the hunting-field meets with recognition on 

 sufferance, and the braggadocia is most inevitably brought to 

 his proper level in the course of a burst of forty minutes across 



