THE HORSE. 245 



However, I have no right to complain, nor do I, 

 since, laying aside my natural and habitual gravity, I 

 fired upon the assailants with shot of no very dissi- 

 milar composition. The affair, and particularly one 

 very gross and ridiculous portion of it, occasioned 

 various grave meetings between Pittman and me, 

 which, with whatever gravity they might commence, 

 generally concluded with a mutual hearty laugh, and 

 a promise from him that the editorial scales should 

 in future, be held with more even handed justice. 



For my arguments, and those of other correspon- 

 dents in favour of summering the hunter abroad, 

 more majorum, and according to the practice of a 

 great majority of our modern sportsmen, I refer the 

 reader to the pages of the Sporting Magazine, be- 

 tween the years 1822 and 1827. It remains for me to 

 say something on the earlier history of this contro- 

 versy, for which end I have had recourse to my re- 

 collections, and to the pages of our old writers. The 

 fact has thence resulted that summer stabling, a very 

 ancient practice abroad, was attempted to be intro- 

 duced, as it should seem, by continental marechales 

 and grooms, in those days, chiefly employed by our 

 great sporting gentlemen and breeders. These 

 foreigners, natives of a country where the grass is 

 burnt up during the summer solstice, and the soil as 

 hard as a turnpike road, unaware of the virtues of the 

 English summer herbage, and of the benefits to be 

 derived to the limbs and constitution of the horse, from 

 the air and the salubrious moisture of the sod, had 

 no opinion of the practice of summer pasture. Then, 

 as now, however, they were able to prevail with very 



