2IO HUNTING. 



Pearson, known for so many seasons as the " flying Captain," 

 charges it hke a squadron of Sikh Cavahy ; Captain Arthur 

 Smith pulls back to a trot ; Lord Carington scarcely shortens 

 the stride of his gallop. Who shall decide between such pro- 

 fessors ? ' Who, indeed ? Much depends on ciraunstmues, more 

 perhaps on horses. That is about the sum-total of all that can 

 be said, and the best man is he who can best adapt his horse to 

 the circumstances, or, if haply he get the chance, the circum- 

 stances to his horse. 



Take your oivn line, and keep it, is a piece of advice one 

 often hears airily given to young riders, more often, perhaps, 

 reads it. Like much other advice, it presupposes conditions 

 under which the young rider, at any rate, is not often able to 

 work. It presupposes, in the first place, an intimate knowledge 

 of the country he is riding over. Now young riders mostly 

 hunt from home, as the saying goes — which is, indeed, by far 

 the most agreeable and rational form of enjoying the sport for 

 all riders ; and we may therefore suppose that he has some, if 

 only a vague, idea of the lie of the ground and the nature of the 

 fences. But in the summer the country looks very different 

 Irom what it does in the winter. Rambling about it leisurely, 

 when Nature has ' hung her mantle green ' on every copse and 

 hedgerow, one gets but a very poor idea of its characteristics 

 and quahties as they present themselves from the back of a 

 galloping horse. It is under the first of these aspects that our 

 young friend is probably most familiar with the country in which 

 he lives, and well as he may think he knows it in such guise, he 

 will be astonished to find how much in the dark he really is 

 when he comes to steer a horse across it when hounds are 

 running. Some men, indeed, seem to be born with ' an eye to 

 a country,' as the saying goes, which, with practice, develops 

 almost into a sort of instinct, or spirit of prophecy ; so much 

 so that were they to be dropped, ready mounted, booted, 

 and spurred, into almost any field in England through which 

 hounds were running, they would incontinently find the best and 

 quickest way out of it. Some such men are generally to be 



