The Sport of Our Jincestors 



caused him much uneasiness. He had no use for the 

 schemer and the doctrinaire. He saw that some of these 

 gentlemen were taking themselves too seriously, and feared 

 ' lest in grasping after the shadow of national perfection 

 we only attain the reality of a saturnalia of prigs — an 

 apotheosis of claptrap.' What would he have had to say 

 about the League of Nations ? This point of view of life 

 is expressed in the pages of * Sporty particularly in the paper 

 on Fox-hunting. This paper is indeed a kind of prose epi- 

 logue to * The Dream of the Old Meltonian ' and to * Lowesby 

 Hall.' Fox-hunting, he says, is the national sport, because 

 it is a manifestation of ' the manly predilection inherent in 

 our Anglo-Saxon nature for a sport into which the element 

 of danger conspicuously enters,' and because * all classes 

 enjoy it.' To the accomplished rider to Hounds it is an 

 anodyne for all kinds of trouble. ' There is a burning 

 scent, a good fox, a good country ; he is on a good horse, 

 and has got a good start ; then for the next twenty or thirty 

 minutes (Elysium on earth can scarcely ever last longer) 

 he absorbs as much happiness into his mental and physical 

 organisation as human nature is capable of containing at 

 one time . . . that very morning, perchance, he was full 

 of care, worried by letters from lawyers and stewards, an- 

 nouncements of farms thrown upon his hands ; and, if an 

 M.P., of a certain contest at the coming election. Where 

 are all these now ? Ask of the winds ! They are vanished. 

 His whole system is steeped in delight ; there is not space 

 in it for the absorption of another sensation. Talk of 

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