Introductory 



had the best of it — the grandfather who was born about 

 1810, the father who was born about 1840, or the son who 

 was born about 1870 ? We cannot give the award to the 

 son. Quite apart from the social and poHtical unrest that 

 was pervading the quiet life of the country before the War, 

 the War itself and its effects are not going to make the after- 

 noon of his life any too cheerful. His great asset is the re- 

 collection of the sports and pastimes of his youth. ' We are 

 having rather a thin time now, old chap, but we have had a 

 bit of the old, and thank goodness ! no one can take it away 

 from us,' is the kind of remark that is made every day. 

 Fox-hunting will revive, and the generation born about the 

 beginning of this century will enjoy their lives just as keenly 

 as English sportsmen can, but the setting will be different. 

 We were speaking of their ancestors. Did the father born 

 about 1840 or the grandfather born about 1810 have the 

 better time ? It is a nice point. On the whole we must 

 decide in favour of the grandfather. Let us assume that 

 he was born in 1810, and died at the age of seventy-six in 

 1886. From the point of view of an agricultural landlord 

 and a Fox-hunter, he would have seen the fairest times that 

 the nineteenth century could offer. He would have seen 

 rural England as yet unscarred by railroads. He would have 

 enjoyed later in life enough of modern comforts to make 

 that life very pleasant. He would have seen what we have 

 ventured to call the Golden Age of Fox-hunting, and would 

 have left his son to compete with a diminished rent-roll, with 

 agricultural depression, and with the spirit of a philosophy 



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