310 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



and heard, I returned to my own country a more chari- 

 table and a better disposed man than I had left it.' " 



" I have not made up my mind on this subject," replied 

 Baby. " It is true, my uncle suggested a tour on the 

 continent, but perceiving I did not exactly respond to his 

 suggestion, he no longer pressed it. I have conversed with 

 several of my friends, senior of course to myself, who 

 have been abroad for longer or shorter periods, and they 

 assured me that they all suffered during the first half of 

 the time from what the French call la maladie du pays, 

 the result of their regrets for having left their homes and 

 friends ; and, during the second, from a perpetual long- 

 ing to return. To those young men who labour under a 

 sense of weariness and satiety of the good things they 

 enjoy in England, and who have no active pursuits, a 

 sojourn abroad may be an agreeable and healthful change ; 

 but by a person, who, like myself, has a pursuit for every 

 day in the year whose wish is to live the life of a country 

 gentleman and a sportsman, and who has no desire to 

 breathe the unwholesome and somewhat tainted atmo- 

 sphere of courts, little advantage is to be gained by it." 



CHAPTER XVI 



The B.D.C. and B.C.M. Our Sportsman makes a tour, iu which 

 he visits many of the most celebrated fox-hunting establish- 

 ments in England. 



OUR hero's next move was to London, where he had 

 apartments taken for him at one of the best hotels, 

 in the best part of the town, and stabling for twelve 

 horses in a mews hard by. As may be imagined in so 

 young a man, he was occasionally to be seen in the streets 

 and the park with his team, in the latter, indeed, always 

 on Sundays ; but he generally preferred the public roads, 

 especially the one on which his education for a coachman 

 had been completed, that to Windsor and Eton ; and 

 twice a week, during his sojourn in London, he gave a 

 dinner to his party at the Castle Inn, Salt Hill, bringing 

 them back to town in the evening, performing the ground, 

 with a change at Hounslow, in two hours, to a minute. 

 Richmond was also another of his favourite rendezvous, 



