54 THE HORSE. 



The hunter may be fairly ridden twice, or, if not with any very hard 

 days, three times in the week ; but, after a thoroughly hard day, and 

 evident distress, three or four days' rest should be allowed. They who are 

 merciful to their horses, allow about thirty days' work in the course of the 

 season ; with s^entle exercise on each of the intermediate days, and parti- 

 cularly a sweat on the day before hunting. There is an account, 

 however, of one horse who followed the fox-hounds seventy-five times in 

 one season. This feat has never been exceeded. 



We recollect to have seen the last Duke of Richmond but one, although an 

 old man, and when he had the gout in his hands so severely that he was 

 obliged to be lifted on horseback, and both arms, being passed through the 

 reins, w^re crossed on his breast, galloping down the steepest part of 

 Bow Hill, in the neighbourhood of Goodwood, almost as abrupt as the ridge 

 of an ordinary house, and cheering on the hounds with all the ardour of a 

 youth*. 



The horse fully shares in the enthusiasm of his rider. It is beautiful to 

 watch the old hunter, who, after many a winters' hard work, is turned into 

 the park to enjoy himself for Hfe. His attitude and his countenance when, 

 perchance, he hears the distant cry of the dogs, are a study. If he can he 

 will break his fence, and, over hedge, and lane, and brook, follow the 

 chase, and come in first at the death. 



A horse that had, a short time before, been severely fired on three legs, 

 and was placed in a loose box, with the door, four feet high, closed, and an 

 aperture over it little more than three feet square, and standing himself 

 nearly sixteen hands, and master of fifteen stone, hearing the cheering of 

 the huntsman and the cry of the dogs at no great distance, sprung through 

 the aperture without leaving a single mark on the bottom, the top, or the 

 sides. 



Then, if the horse be thus ready to exert liim self for our pleasure— and 

 pleasure alone is here the object — it is indefensible and brutal to urge him 



^ * Sir John Malcolm (in his Sketches of Persia) gives an amusing account of the impres- 

 sion which a fox-hunt in the English style made on an Arab. 



" I was entertained by listening to an Arab peasant, who, with animated gestures, was 

 narrating to a group of his countrymen all he had seen of this noble hunt. ' There came 

 the fox,' said he, pointing with a crooked stick to a clump of date trees, ' there he came at 

 a great rate. I hallooed, but nobody heard me, and I thought he must get away ; but when 

 he got quite out of sight, up came a large spotted dog, and then another and another. They 

 all had their noses to the ground, and gave tongue — whow.. whow, whow, so loud, I was 

 frightened. Away went these devils, who soon found the poor animal. After them gal- 

 loped the Foringees (a coiTuption of Frank, the name given to an European over all Asia), 

 shouting and trying to make a noise louder than the dogs. No wonder they killed the fox 

 among them.' " 



The Treasurer, Burleigh, the sage councillor of Queen Elizabeth, could not enter into 

 the pleasures of the chase. Old Andrew Fuller relates a quaint story of him : — 



" When some noblemen had gotten William Cecill Lord Burleigh to ride with them 

 a hunting, and tlie sport began to be cold, ' What call you this ?' said the treasurer. 

 ' Oh ! now the dogs are at favdt,' was the reply. ' Yea,' quoth the treasurer, ' take me 

 again in such a fault, and I'll give } ou leave to punish me.' " 



In former times it was the fashion for women to hunt almost as often and as keenly 

 as the men. Queen Elizabeth was extremely fond of the chase. Rowland Whyte, in 

 a letter to Sir Robert Sidney, says, '' Her niajesty is well, and excellently disposed 

 to hmiting ; for every second day she is on horseback, and continues the sport long." 



This custom soon afterwards began to decline, and the jokes and sarcasms oi' the 

 witty court of Charles II. contributed to discountenance it. 



It is a curious circumstance, that the first work on hunting that proceeded from the 

 press, was from the pea of a female, Juliana Barnes, or Berners, the sister of Lord 

 Berners, and prioress of the nunnery of Sopewell, about the year 1481. 



