52 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



Give, ye Britous, then. 

 Your sportive fury, pitiless to pour 

 Loose ou the nightly rohher of the fold ; 

 Him from his craggy, winding haunts unearth'd. 

 Let all the thunder of the chase pursue. 



Thougli, to tell the truth, he was scarcely so hard on the fox as 

 he was on his pursuers after all. 



From this time, however, our good friend Eeynard was to 

 emerge as it were from the chrysalis state in which for nearly a 

 century he had been involved. No longer was he to be hunted 

 at odd times and seasons with harriers when he could be found, 

 and, as it were, by accident, but regular establishments were to 

 be kept up in his behalf. Fox-hunting was to become the sport 

 of the nation, and the means of giving a livelihood to thousands, 

 not to mention spending fortunes in remote places which would 

 scarce have heard the jingle of a guinea had it not been for the 

 chase. Names like Beckford and Meynell soon came on the 

 scene — the former as the greatest writer on hunting matters 

 England has yet seen, the latter as the founder of a country 

 which still stands at the head of all English hunts, and to which 

 the choicest spirits of the chase year after year resort. 



There is some difference, I trow, between the establishment 

 of William de Foxhunte — who looked after this branch of sport 

 for Edward the Eirst, with his six couple of fox-hounds, two 

 boys, horse to carry the nets, and William Blatherwick, who, 

 though also called huntsman (unless, indeed, he is the same 

 person), must, I take it, have been first whip, or the equivalent 

 for that personage — and the one Meynell organized at Quorndon. 



I have thus endeavoured to trace the fox, from the day when 

 he was held almost in abhorrence, to the time when he became 

 a gentleman at large amongst us, whose life, save during the 

 few hours he submits to his destiny in being hunted, is one of 

 ease and enjoyment. In fact, I have sketched, as far as my 

 powers will allow, his social history, and shown that he only 

 attained his proper station with the advance of civilization. 



