CHAPTER II 



HUNTING A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 



The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 

 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 



So sang the late Poet Laureate, and the lines may- 

 be as fitly applied to hunting as to anything else 

 which is affected by what is known euphuistically 

 as the march of civilisation. Hunting is perforce 

 conducted differently from what it was in the days 

 when George III. was king, and, in some respects, 

 at any rate, it can scarcely be said to have improved, 

 whilst in others it has, to use another euphuism, 

 "marched with the times." Nowadays hounds run 

 faster, they are more level and sorty, and there are 

 more men who ride hard and straight, but the old 

 days were good days, and in many respects we 

 might follow the example of our ancestors, who, 

 whatever were their faults, could not be looked 

 upon as feather-bed sportsmen. 



There cannot be a greater blunder than that 

 which is sometimes, nay, frequently, made by 

 writers who have little practical knowledge of 

 hunting, to the effect that until comparatively 

 recent times hunting men were destitute of refine- 

 ment. Squire Western is held up by them as the 

 type of every hunting squire who lived prior to 



