Mrs. Deechek Stowe on Fox-hunting. 401 



American gentlemen have frequently distinguished themselves as hard riders to hounds 

 in our best hunting counties, as they generally do whenever they take up any pursuit that 

 requires pluck and decision ; but Mrs. Beecher Stowe, like some English literary critics, cou'id 

 not understand fox-hunting at all. She relates in her " Sunny Memories " that, dining with 

 Earl Russell, the conversation turned on hunting, and that when she expressed her astonish- 

 ment "that in the height of English civilisation this vestige of the savage state should remain," 

 they only laughed, and told stories about hunting. 



It must be admitted that Mrs. Stowe's observations were very natural in a woman who 

 had never been under the influence of hunting associations. She was probably not aware 

 that the hunting-field, judiciously used, is not only an exciting, healthy amusement, but one 

 of the roads to the anxious desire of so many — good society. Washington Irving, who was 

 a man with sympathies for every class and every pleasant pursuit, took a different view of 

 the rural sports that have created our resident gentry out of the rude squires and vulgar 

 citizens of the days of Pope and Addison. He says, in his charming "Sketch Book": — "The 

 fondness for rural life among the higher classes of the English has had a great and salutary 

 effect upon the national character. I do not know a finer race of men than the English 

 gentlemen. Instead of the softness and effeminacy which characterises the men of rank of 

 most countries, they exhibit a union of elegance and strength, of robustness of frame and 

 freshness of complexion, which I am inclined to attribute to their living so much in the open 

 air, pursuing so largely the invigorating sports of the field." 



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