Introductory 



* so we may as well enjoy ourselves out hunting as long as we 

 can. There are no sheep in the fields to bother us, the 

 country is all being laid down to grass, and, by Jove ! we are 

 having a better scenting time than we have had for years.' 



The country gentleman who came to man's estate about 

 A.D. i860 cannot have been far from the golden age of Fox- 

 hunting. In the matter of creature comforts he was better 

 served than his father. The railroads, so far from having 

 put a stop to hunting, as * Nimrod ' thought they would, 

 became a positive convenience, without being sufficiently 

 numerous to be a hindrance in the field. The Fox-hunter 

 who wished to pursue deer, salmon, or grouse before the 

 hunting season must have found it more comfortable to 

 travel to Perth or Inverness in the train in twelve or eighteen 

 hours than to undertake the same journey by the turnpike 

 road. Sitting up all night in an ordinary railway carriage 

 was not much fun, but in a few years the comfortable sleeping 

 berth and its well-mannered groom of the chambers made 

 the journey almost a luxury. This same railroad also enabled 

 the member of Parliament to meet the Foxhounds within 

 measurable distance of London after a night at Westminster, 

 and unlocked to the Oxford undergraduates the pastures of 

 Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire as alternatives to the 

 groves of Waterperry and the thickets of Bagley Wood. 



But there were other accessories of the Chase that contri- 

 buted to remove certain disabilities under which the previous 

 generation had suffered. There is hardly any record of a 

 good run in the earlier part of the nineteenth century which 



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