4o6 The Book of the Horse. 



" Then he takes the old horse by the head, and he sails 

 In the wake of his darlings, all ear and all eye, 

 As they come in his line, o'er banks, fences, and rails, 

 The cramped ones to creep and the fair ones to lly. 

 It 's a very queer place that will put in the mire 

 Such a rare one to ride as the Galloping Squire. 



" So forty fair minutes they run and they race — 

 'Tis a heaven to some, 'tis a lifetime to all — 

 Though the horses we ride are such gluttons for pace. 



There are stout ones that stop, there are safe ones tliat fall. 

 But the names of the vanquished need never transpire. 

 For they're all in the rear of the Galloping Squire." J. Whyte Melville. 



Charles James Fox once said there was no pleasure so great as winning at hazard, and 

 the next greatest pleasure was losing at hazard. Those who have the sporting instinct, a 

 combination of the tastes of the hunter and the horseman, will agree that the finest sport in 

 the world is fox-hunting in a country like that of the Galloping Squire ; and the next best 

 sport, fox-huntuig in a country bad for riding but good for hunting. 



An examination of a hunting inap of England will show the large place that fox-hunting 

 has in our agricultural economy. It begins in Northumberland, a county of hills, dales, and 

 downs, or of great woods that you can ride through, which is bounded by the best hunting 

 counties of Scotland — Roxburghshire and Dumfries — it ends in Cornwall ; it extends from 

 North Wales and Cheshire on one side to Norfolk on the other. It flourishes in the 

 greatest perfection in the counties like Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Herefordshire, 

 where rich grass pastures feed fat oxen, where the fields range from twenty to fifty acres, 

 and big fences and broad streams demand blood, courage, and condition, if the riders mean 

 to be in the first flight. But it is also pursued with enthusiasm by resident sportsmen far 

 from " the madding crowd " of fashion, over the great arable fields and wide ditches of 

 the " roothings " of Essex, over the flint-covered plough-lands and rolling downs, scarcely 

 relieved by a jumpable fence, of Hainpshire, over the small fields and heavy banks of Suffolk 

 and Sussex, and amidst the hop-gardens of Kent. The grassy vales and sheep-feeding stone- 

 wall-divided districts of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire are second to none for affording 

 sport ; while in North Devon and the adjoining hills of Somersetshire, although riding to 

 hounds in the way men ride over the Vale of Aylesbury and the other feeding not breeding 

 counties is impossible, every little farmer understands the " noble science," and takes the 

 deepest interest in the performances of miscellaneous packs, often kennelled in barns, hunted 

 by parsons, and whipped into by ploughboys. Indeed, it may safely be said — for horsemen 

 you must go to Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, or other pasture 

 counties ; but for sportsmen learned in the working of a pack, familiar with every note, to 

 Devonshire and Somersetshire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Wales. 



Hugo Meynell, the founder of the Ouorn Hunt (before his time fox-hunting was assumed 

 to be the amusement of uncultivated squires) first made it fashionable. He established the 

 Quorn somewhere about 1750, and retained the mastership until 1795. He discontinued the 

 old plan of commencing hunting at daybreak or even by starlight, in order to come on the 

 scent of the fox on his midnight marauding expeditions, and "drag" up to his lair in the 

 thickets where his kennel had been previously closed by the midnight earth-.'^topper. 



It was under Mr. Meynell's dynasty, greatly to that mighty hunter's disgust, that Mr. 



