144 FOX-HUNTING 



no longer beats with the hot anticipation of 

 the long ago, his experience gives him a 

 conscious power, and an ability to appreciate 

 niceties unnoticed by the crowd ; his memory 

 is a storehouse in which he delights to 

 rummage. The melancholy that must accom- 

 pany age, he, like others, may not escape 

 from — the moments when he re-peoples his 

 country with those who have gone, and 

 remembers the voices that are heard no 

 more. But the landscape from the covert 

 side is all the dearer to him for the echo of 

 voices long since stilled, and the cry of those 

 hounds whose blood still flows in the stream- 

 ine black and white and tan with whom he 

 still holds a place. 



Well, then, if it was almost like a habit in 

 some districts, where foxes were systematic- 



