The Origin of Fox-himting 



power of the foxhound, and there is much to show 

 that a good deal of England's greatness is due 

 to that influence. The daring deeds under the 

 greatest difficulties in the Peninsular War, the 

 important conquests all over the globe with mere 

 handfuls of men, and the hardihood of our earliest 

 colonists came about after the hard-riding era had 

 commenced, and the Iron Duke always insisted 

 that his best officers were the first flight men of 

 Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, and he gave his 

 opinion that Assheton Smith would have been 

 the best cavalry general in the world. Then, 

 again, the horses were improved by Hugo Meynell's 

 discovery of that forward dash of the foxhound, 

 and by its subsequent development, as no one 

 could have believed in the manner of horses getting 

 over a country unless it had been for that system 

 of following hounds at high pressure. The horses 

 were as much elated by the voice of the hound in 

 full cry as the men, and to jump quite extra- 

 ordinary fences that could not have been taken in 

 cool blood stamped the character of the English 

 hunter and made him really the utility horse for all 

 nations. The country was therefore enriched by 

 foreign trade, and it can certainly be all traced to a 

 system that strangers have always considered very 

 remarkable. Frenchmen declare that it would 

 have been out of all reason to establish a free-and- 

 easy, go-as-you-please policy such as has been 



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