156 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



had sought sanctuary in a rabbit-burrow, or in a more 

 legitimate refuge; whether the process of extraction 

 was of brief or of indefinite duration,— that man was held 

 a recreant who would desert his post, or think about his 

 " domus et placens uxor" till he could render a posthu- 

 mous account of the fox which had afforded " the 

 hunting of that day." 



Some amusing stories are on record, of the supply of 

 refreshments, and of the scenes which such occasions 

 furnished. It must be remembered, that this " beginning 

 of their end" was not later, probably, than the horn* of 

 our own commencement ; but a party of our forefathers, 

 in the act of besieging a main earth, must have formed 

 a humorous subject for the pencil of an artist. 



The practice of taking into the field a number of 

 hounds, such as Somervile, in his day, censures as 



" That numerous pack, that crowd of state, 

 With which tlie vain profusion of the great 

 Covers the lawn, and shakes the tremhling copse," — 



has long been discontinued, for the very reasons described 

 by the same poet.* Hounds should work in concert ; 



* " Pompous encumbrance ! a magnificence 

 Useless, vexatious ! for the ^vily fox, 

 Safe in the increasing number of his foes, 

 Kens well the great advantage : shrinks behind, 

 And slily creeps through the same beaten track. 

 And hunts them, step by step ; then views escaped, 

 With inward ecstasy, the panting throng 

 In their own footsteps puzzled, foiled, and lost." 



