THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 99 



tlieir use when mounted. It would be absurd to at- 

 tempt any thesis upon riding to hounds, beyond the 

 general principles of the art, in a w^ork dedicated 

 especially to one country, and that a provincial, con- 

 sidering that the style of crossing one country differs 

 most materially from the mode of riding over another. 

 The best horse over Leicestershire miglit be quite out 

 of his element in Essex ; and the rules for negotiating 

 properly the ox-fences, raspers, and brooks of the pas- 

 tures, might be wholly inapplicable to the hog-backed 

 stiles, the cramped corners, blind ditches, up-bank, 

 down-lane drop, leaps of a plough country. I have 

 said before, that there is, in Hertfordshire, and those 

 parts of Bedfordshire belonging to our hunt, every 

 variety of ground, and, consequently, are there every 

 description of fences, from the flying-leap to the creep. 

 You may see a hack go well enough in one half-hour, 

 and, in the next, nothing but a real hunter has a chance. 

 Depend upon one thing, that you cannot have too good 

 a horse : — one that cannot go well in the best countries 

 cannot go properly in any, notwithstanding Mr. Louth's 

 asseveration, in the poem from which I have before 

 quoted, of the run from Billesdon Coplow : — 



" All descriptions of country, all horses won't suit, 

 What's a good country hunter may here prove a brute." 



There is more taken out of a horse in covert, and 

 in the length of runs, than in flying countries. I do 

 not mean to say that a man may not make a fight 



7—2 



