FOREWORD TO FIRST EDITION xxiii 



and warcraft he would have ranked more nearly 

 with Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein, and 

 would have stood better at the bar of history. 

 Louis XVI. was also devoted to the chase in its 

 tamer forms, and was shooting at driven game 

 when the Paris mob swarmed out to take posses- 

 sion of his person. The great lords, with whom 

 love of hunting had become a disease, not merely 

 made of game-preserving a grievous burden for 

 the people, but also followed the chase in ways 

 which made scant demands upon the hardier quali- 

 ties either of mind or of body. Such debased 

 sport was contemptible then ; and it is con- 

 temptible now. Luxurious and effeminate arti- 

 ficiality, and the absence of all demands for the 

 hardy virtues, rob any pastime of all title to 

 regard. Shooting at driven game on occasions 

 when the day's sport includes elaborate feasts in 

 tents on a store of good things brought in waggons 

 or on the backs of sumpter mules, while the sport 

 itself makes no demand upon the prowess of the 

 so-called sportsman, is but a dismal parody upon 

 the stern hunting life in which the man trusts to 

 his own keen eye, stout thews, and heart of steel 

 for success and safety in the wild warfare waged 

 against wild nature. 



Neither of the two authors now under con- 

 sideration comes in this undesirable class. Both 

 were mighty men with their hands, terrible in 



