HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 13 



were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches,' whence arose, 

 he says, many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. It was urged, 

 on the side of the ladies, that in case of accident decency was 

 thus better preserved ; but to this the answer was, ' that such 

 accidents ought to be prevented in a manner more consistent 

 with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from such 

 dangerous recreations ' — and possibly, as Goldsmith's connois- 

 seur observed of a different matter, there is much to be said 

 on both sides. Queen Elizabeth was a notable huntress. 

 Blaine, in his ' Encyclop?edia of Rural Sports,' quotes an 



' Queen Elizabeth was a notable huntress.' 



account from an eye-witness of her Majesty's prowess at 

 Kenilworth during her magnificent entertainment by Leicester 

 m 1575 ; and in her seventy-seventh year, when at her palace 

 at Oatlands, she is described in a contemporary letter as still 

 ' well and excellently disposed to hunting, for every second day 

 she is on horseback and continues the sport long.' Though 

 Lord Tennyson has called her the ' man-minded offspring ' of 

 her father, it does not appear that she was sufficiently mascu- 

 line to adopt the seat in vogue among her sex in the fourteenth 

 century. According to Blaine that fashion was put out of court 



