THE WILLEY SQTJIEE. 81 



that lie represents himself to have become so 

 enamoured of the chase, that in his letters from the 

 country he says : '^ I intend to hunt twice a week 

 during my stay with Sir Eoger, and shall prescribe 

 the moderate use of this exercise to all my country 

 friends as the best kind of physic for mending a bad 

 constitution and preserving a good one.'^ He con- 

 cludes with the following quotation from Dryden :— - 



" The first physicians by debauch were made ; 

 Excess began, and sloth sustains the trade : 

 By chase our long-liv'd fathers earned their food ; 

 Toil strung their arms and purified their blood." 



But a country squire of Mr. Forester's day even 

 more pithily and quaintly expresses himself as to 

 the advantages to be derived from out-door sports : 

 — " Those useful hours that our fathers employed 

 on horseback in the fields/' he says, "are lost to 

 their posterity between a stinking pair of sheets. Balls 

 and operas, assemblies and masquerades, so exhaust 

 the spirits of the puny creatures over-night, that yawn- 

 ing and chocolate are the main labours and entertain- 

 ments of the morning. The important afiairs of 

 barber, milliner, perfumer, and looking-glass, are 

 their employ till the call to dinner, and the bottle or 

 gaming table demand the tedious hours that inter- 



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