78 THE "WILLEY SQTJIEE. 



mark with modern sportsmen and future Nimrods, 

 at any rate if we consent to regard tlie Squire's clia- 

 racteristics as outcrops of the instincts of an ancient 

 stock. Descended from an ancestry so associated 

 with forest sports and pursuits, he was like a moving 

 plant which receives its nourishment from the air, 

 and he lived chiefly through his senses. He was 

 waylaid, as it were, on life's path by hereditary ten- 

 dencies, and his career was chequered by indulgences 

 which, read in the light of the present day, look 

 different from what they then did, when at court 

 and in the country there were many to keep him in 

 countenance. At any rate, Squire Forester lived in 

 what may be called the dawn of the golden age of 

 fox-hunting. We say dawn, because although Lord 

 Arundel kept a pack of hounds some time between 

 1690 and 1700, and Sir John Tyrwhitt and Charles 

 Pelham, Esq., did so in 1713, yet as Lord Wilton, in 

 his *' SjDorts and Pursuits of the English " states, the 

 first real pack of foxhounds was established in the 

 West of England about 1730. It was a period when, 

 for various reasons, a reaction in favour of the manly 

 sports of England's earlier days had set in, one being 

 the discovery that those distinguished for such sports 

 were they who assisted most in winning on the 



