The Sport of Our (Ancestors 



sharpen his brains on his model, and indulges for the 

 moment in sheer irreverent parody. * Lowesby Hall ' 

 sparkles with wit, is studded with epigram, and contains 

 some remarkable prophecies. Lord Tennyson's own pro- 

 phecy about airships is startling : — 



* For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 

 Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ; 



Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 

 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 



Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew 

 From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue.' 



Now look at Mr. Bromley-Davenport's picture of the 

 condition of England when the Whigs and the prigs whom 

 he hated so cordially had completed their handiwork ; and 

 see that as a prophet he is not far behind his model, even 

 though Fox-hunting is not yet abolished by an Order in 

 Council. Such objection to field sports, particularly to Fox- 

 hunting, as there may have been was probably political in 

 part and in part humanitarian. To-day it has no platform. 

 In truth, it never had a very strong one. No humanitarian 

 who is squeamish about field sports can expect a hearing 

 until he has set forth his views on the condition of such 

 countries as Russia and Ireland. There may have been 

 at one time a sort of abstract political animosity to the 

 whole idea of the Chase on the part of the heresy hunter 

 with a mind tinctured by class feeling. Fox-hunting might 

 appear to such a one to be a rudiment of a haughty and 

 88 



