258 HORSES AND HOUNDS. 



must be adinitted ; but, on account of my hunting propensities, 

 the chair allotted to me at my neighbour's table was not often 

 vacant. That it is not indispensable for a gentleman huntsman 

 always to feed his own hounds I think I have brought evidence 

 to prove in the case of Mr. Assheton Smith. I therefore may 

 conclude that Mr. Delme Eadcliffe, having heard me on this 

 point, will admit my argument to have some little weight. That 

 we both agree in other respects there is no doubt, " that a gen- 

 tleman huntsman ought to be the best huntsman." 



Although I have often stated that the management of a pack 

 of fox-hounds is a business of itself, yet Thave nowhere said that 

 it should be the only business of a man's life. Hunting in mo- 

 deration is a rational amusement ; as such, and such only, can it 

 be considered, when it does not materially interfere with other 

 and more important avocations. When this is the case it 

 becomes at once an irrational amusement ; he who devotes six 

 days out of the seven in a week to hunting alone, makes it then 

 the business of liis life, or at least the greater part of it, reckon- 

 ing the hunting season from the beginning of September to the 

 end of Ai)ril. Men labour six days out of seven for their daily 

 bread. Tradesmen and merchants devote every day in the 

 week to their calling to secure an independence Ibr themselves 

 in old age. No necessity, however, exists for any man to hunt six 

 days in the week (unless the huntsman who is paid for so doing) ; 

 but on the contrary, there is a necessity that he should not do so. 



An old gentleman who had been listening very quietly to 

 some young and ardent sportsmen, who were talking of their 

 hunting five and six days a week, very coolly observed, " Well, 

 gentlemen, then it strikes me that you consider the whole busi- 

 ness of life to consist in trying to get foxes out of it f' There 

 should be moderation in all things — Bunt ceHi denique fines 

 quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum. 



Having settled the point that gentlemen would make the best 

 performances in the field, I think we may also assume that 

 next in order come those who have served their apprenticeship 

 to gentlemen huntsmen as whippers-in. I could mention 

 several, but there are two men now at the head of establish- 

 ments, whom I well remember — Jim Hills, who whipped-in to 

 the Hon. H. Moreton, afterwards Lord Ducie, and Jim Tread- 

 well, who lived for many years with the late Mr. Codrington. 

 A better judge of hounds and hunting never existed than Lord 

 Ducie; and ]Mr. Codrington was admitted by all his brother 

 masters of hounds to have been a perfect oracle on the pedigrees 

 of hounds, and everything relating to the noble science. That 

 such masters should have turned out first-rate hands cannot be 

 surprising — admitting, of course, that their pupils had natural 



