BRITONS ' GLORY. 187 



dom: here he has hitherto reigned unattempted to 

 be rivalled ; for here, and here only, has fox-hunting 

 appeared in the zenith of its glory. Half a century 

 ago a foreigner had no conception such a description 

 of animal existed. The case is now altering very 

 fast, and the spirit of racing, hunting, and even 

 steeple-racing, is becoming widely diffused among 

 some of our foreign neighbours. Four-in-hand, how- 

 ever, still remains among them a complete stumbling- 

 block; and a foreigner is generally about as good a 

 judge of a well-appointed mail, with its four blood 

 horses, as I should be of a Ceylon elephant with his 

 howdah. He likes la parade of four horses to his 

 carriage as well as we do ; but here his gratification 

 ends : that there should be any in driving them does 

 not come within his conception. He would consider 

 it an ungentlemanlike thing to do, and it would be so 

 in his country, where it is not the custom of men of 

 fashion to do it. Here, to be a first-rate four-in-hand 

 whip is in a limited sense held all but an accomplish- 

 ment. This arises in a great measure from the cir- 

 cumstance that to become so a man must be or have 

 been either a man of fortune or a stage-coachman. 

 His not being or having been the latter, leads to the 

 inference that he is or has been the former. Hunting 

 and the turf are also the pursuits of men of fortune. 

 That most senseless and unsportsmanlike amusement, 

 steeple racing, is, I am sorry to say, becoming so. 

 No men carry out the axiom, " that whatever is 

 worth doing at all is worth doing well," more tluni 

 the English do in all sporting pursuits. The four-in- 

 hand rage brought out among gentlemen some of 

 the best coachmen in the world. Hunting, particu- 

 larly in Leicestershire, has produced among our aris- 



