X INTRODUCTION. 



with me for the copyright : with what result 

 is known ; and here to my pubhshers I tender 

 my best thanks. 



In arranging now these writings — put 

 together and brought before the public at a 

 time when I had apparently many years of 

 active life before me — it is to me a melan- 

 choly reflection that the things of which they 

 treat are gone from my eyes, — for alas ! I can 

 ride no more. Never again may my heart be- 

 gladdened with the music of the hounds, or 

 my frame invigorated by the exercise which 

 I so dearly loved. An accident, sudden and 

 unexpected, has deprived me of my strength, 

 and left me to speak in mournful whispers of 

 what was for long my happiest theme. Yet 

 why repine where so much is left ? It is but 

 another chapter in our life's history ! We 

 love and cling to one pui'suit — and it passes 

 from us ; then another absorbs our attention, 

 — it, too, vanishes ; and so on — perhaps 



