FOX-HUNTING 



' By which I do not at all mean that the mare has run away 

 with me. On the contrary, I am afraid that I have been 

 shaking her up dvu-ing the last five minutes more than once. 

 But the spirit of Odin, " the mover," " the goer " (for that is 

 his etymology) whom German sages connect much with the 

 Wild Huntsman, has got hold of my midriff and marrow, and 

 go I must, for " The Goer " has taken me. . . . 



' . . . The hounds, moreover, have obligingly waited for 

 us tAvo fields on. For the cold wet pastures we are entering 

 do not carry the scent as the heather did, in which Reinecke, 

 as he galloped, brushed off his perspiration against every 

 twig : and the hounds are now flemishing up and down by the 

 side of the brown, alder-fringed brook which parts the counties. 

 I can hear the flap and snort of the dogs' nostrils as they 

 canter round me ; and I like it. It is exciting ; but why — 

 who can tell ? 



' What beautiful creatures they are too ! Next to a Greek 

 statue (I mean a real old Greek one ; for I am a thoroughly 

 anti-preraphaelite benighted pagan heathen in taste, and 

 intend some day to get up a Cinque-Cento Club, for the total 

 abolition of Gothic art) — next to a Greek statue, I say, I know 

 few such combinations of grace and strength, as in a fine fox- 

 hound. It is the beauty of the Theseus — light and yet 

 massive ; and light not in spite of its masses, but on account 

 of the perfect disposition of them. I do not care for grace in 

 man, woman, or animal, which is obtained (as in the old 

 German painters) at the expense of honest flesh and blood. . . .' 



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