Introductory 



the family living, the army, and the navy between themselves, 

 having received from their father a sufficient allowance to 

 make them independent of their not too exacting professions. 

 This arrangement formed a convenient setting for the enjoy- 

 ment of field sports in the autumn and winter, and of other 

 delights in the summer. It is true that there may have 

 been a certain period of boredom for * the sad Meltonian ' 

 in the spring. But this was shortly to be relieved by the 

 festive Yeomanry Week, followed by the London season with 

 Epsom, Ascot, Newmarket, and Goodwood, to say nothing 

 of a country house cricket party, of all forms of junketing 

 one of the most enchanting. The original picture from 

 which this brief sketch is drawn of a certain aspect of leisured 

 life is to be found in the novels of Whyte Melville, who 

 knew the whole subject intimately, and must be accepted 

 as an authority. It is not presented as the lament of laudator 

 temporis acti, still less is it intended to be a defence of a social 

 system as it manifested itself to some of us during a certain 

 epoch. It is rather offered with the idea of trying to trace 

 the change in the atmosphere of country life which was 

 taking place during the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury and the first decade of the twentieth. An amusing 

 and touching symptom of the devout attitude of our an- 

 cestors towards field sports marks the contrast between the 

 spirit of this period and that of the age that was passing. 

 They thought it quite natural that even the Church should be 

 the instrument for registering the public veneration for Fox- 

 hunting and horsemanship. It may be within the memory 



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