120 THE HORSE AXD HIS RIDER 



CHAPTER X. 



THE HUNTING-FIELD: ITS HEROES AND THEIR 

 EXPLOITS. 



FOX-HUNTING is a sport peculiarly English. There 

 is nothing like it anywhere else. The French, in- 

 deed, hunt the stag, the boar, and the wolf on horse- 

 back with hounds, the huntsman being bound up in 

 the coils of a brass instrument, which completely 

 encircles his body, and from which he produces notes 

 of encouragement to hounds and hunters. Grand, 

 stately, and costly affairs were the hunts in which 

 the late Emperor Napoleon and the Bourbon mon- 

 archs who preceded him indulged; but these were 

 mere mockeries of sport compared with the exciting 

 incidents of a good run with the Pytchley or the 

 Quorn. 



The hunting-field has always been a nursery of 

 brave men. The most desperate and daring riders 

 in the world have been bred there, and the object of 

 this chapter is to chronicle the nanes and noted 

 deeds of some of those worthies who well deserve to 

 be styled the i Heroes of the Hunting-field.' 



