FOX-HUNTING ON THE DECLINE. O 



breeches, or the real " amor venandi" in the true sense 

 of the word, which bring so large a congregation of 

 neighbours together, as may be witnessed by the side 

 of a fox cover on a hunting morning, it matters but 

 little, so long as it tends to the increase of good and 

 cordial feelings in a neighbourhood, and offers so strong 

 an inducement to o;entlemen of fortune to reside on 

 their property in the country. One of the greatest 

 advantages held out in advertisements for letting a 

 house, is its vicinity to any celebrated hunt, or its 

 being situated in the centre of various packs of hounds; 

 without which many houses in a retired part of the 

 country would never find tenants. The average num- 

 ber of sportsmen who are seen at a " favourite fixture 

 in one of our crack hunting countries, is about an 

 hundred and fifty ;* at a woodland in one of the 

 " provincials," it is about thirty or forty ; and although 

 in the motley crowd numbers of men of rank and for- 

 tune may be found to give two or three hundred 

 guineas for a horse (an extra fifty being demanded if 

 qualified for a steeple chase or hunters' sweepstakes), 

 yet it would be next to an impossibility to discover one 

 single person who could be prevailed on to take the 

 management of a pack of fox-hounds, or to contribute 

 more than the price of a cover hack towards the sup- 

 port of them. The present system of living two-thirds 

 of the year in London, or in a foreign land ; that most 

 insinuating and undermining vice of gaming ; and the 



* An hundred and fifty is named as the average number ; occasionally at some 

 of the " crack meets," as many as three hundred men in scarlet may be counted. 

 When the King's stag-hounds were taken into the New Forest, in 18j6, the 

 number of sportsmen who daily attended them, might be computed at about three 

 thousand, of all ranks and denominations. 



