SPEEES GOOD, BETTEK, AND BEST. 167 



work. Without this, I must say, I consider a great 

 deal of the zest, anxiety, and beauty of hunting is 

 lost ; that is, to a man who enjoys seeing hounds, and 

 seeing them hunt ; and dearly I love a fox-hound. 



If I were asked, whether I did not consider fifty 

 men well mounted setting each other across a certain 

 distance of country a good spree, I should of course 

 say it was ; and if there were no hounds to be got at 

 I should join in it. Doing this with a drag would be 

 a far better spree ; and really if hounds after a fox 

 are only to race across country, it brings hunting 

 merely to spree the third and best. 



I have, in speaking of the pace hounds now go, 

 made use of the terms now and now-a-days : in doing 

 so, I mean it in reference to what I have heard they 

 did perhaps fifty years ago ; for I am not aware they go 

 faster than they always have gone since I first hunted. 

 I am quite clear that I never saw as good real hunt- 

 ing as my ancestors did. I have seen bolder and 

 better riding most decidedly : but as to hunting, I 

 have seen more of that in one week's cub-hunting 

 than in a whole season's regular hunting ; and I 

 fancy I really do know what hunting means. At all 

 events, I was blooded when only seven years old. It 

 may be said that practice never improves some peo- 

 ple : this may be my case ; if it is, I can't help it. 



Let us suppose hounds to have been streaming 

 away a burst of four or five miles, have come to a 

 check, and the Huntsman not at the moment up with 

 them. On his getting to them, it would be of the 

 first importance to him to know what hound or 

 hounds were leading, or rather had been. If it were 

 some particular hounds, he would know to all but a 

 certainty that so far his fox had come ; and, on 



