PREFACE xix 



me, perhaps, too far, I hope the rising generation of sports- 

 men will take this advice : Never to neglect any graceful 

 accomplishment, either of mind or body ; never to let the 

 pleasures of the field, the forest, or the river override or 

 obliterate the nobler ambitions of life. My ambition in that 

 phase has, perhaps, been ruthlessly thwarted and strangled ; 

 but let that pass. A gentleman, by the enjoyment of any 

 sport, from the horse-race and cock-fight to the boxing- 

 match, may be the chivalrous knight and gentleman still, 

 and remain unsullied by the people he sees, and who have 

 a right to be, and are, even around the royal stand at 

 Ascot. The lower orders ought to be the better for him, 

 instead of his being the worse for them ; and I do not hesitate 

 to say that, by practical experience, I have found it so. There 

 used to be a vulgar idea, that " a fox-hunter " was unfit 

 for, or dumb in the drawing - room, or in ladies 1 society : 

 and, indeed, I have seen gentlemen whose heads were capable 

 of but one idea, and that not a very clear one, who had no 

 other conversation than that pertaining to a horse or hound. 

 This should not be; and among rational men, capable of 

 making the most of the animals they use, it will not be 

 so, for they will exercise the joyous chase as a relaxation 

 from the more important business of life, and not as the chief 

 object of existence, and return from the forest, the river, 

 the field, or the fair combat, only too happy again to share in 

 the refined, the grateful, and graceful society of woman. 



