The Sport of Our ^Ancestors 



sense they had in their youth an almost better time than 

 their fathers. The Reform Bill and the Repeal of the Corn 

 Laws had not really begun to make themselves felt either in 

 or out of Parliament. There was a period of ease in the 

 history of English country life, and indeed in political and 

 foreign affairs generally, dating from the suppression of the 

 Indian Mutiny in 1858 down to the beginning of the eighties, 

 the like of which we may not enjoy again for many a long 

 year. It is true that the glass began to fall in the political 

 as well as the meteorological sense towards the end of this 

 period. But the Eastern Question and the troubles in 

 Afghanistan and South Africa, so intimately described in 

 Mr. Buckle's ' Lije of Disraeli/ did not react upon the Fox- 

 hunter. The wet seasons in the late seventies certainly 

 hastened what the Protectionist pamphleteers of the day 

 called * the Curse of Cobden.' Landlord and tenant alike 

 thought that the days of agriculture were numbered. But 

 the wet seasons, distressing though they were to those who 

 loved husbandry, were not without a queer kind of compen- 

 sation to the actual sport itself in the field, although it should 

 not be forgotten that in the long run the prosperity of Fox- 

 hunting and of farming are linked together. The nature 

 of this compensation resides in the fact that as a general 

 rule a thoroughly well rain -soaked earth carries a good 

 scent. * I suppose we are all ruined,' exclaimed a noble lord 

 who hunted his own Hounds, as after a good run he stamped 

 into the ancestral hall in stained red coat and water-logged 

 top-boots, the picture of a happy, if ruined. Englishman, 

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