LEICESTER AND NORTHAMPTON 105 



comfortably middle-aged, for directly he does so he 

 ceases so be of much value. But we find not only 

 soldiers coming into the hunting-field, but statesmen, 

 and foreigners as well as Englishmen. Lawyers too, 

 like that Serjeant Goulburn who was the delight of 

 the Stratford-on-Avon Hunt Club for his powers of 

 anecdote, and who wrote the Epwell Hunt Poem, 

 a work which, as our friend Nimrod truly prophesied, 

 has outlived the Serjeant's finest judicial orations. 

 All these find in hunting a recreation which cannot 

 be surpassed. Some men there are, too, whom games 

 do not interest greatly, and such men often find in 

 hunting and horsemanship the exercise and change 

 of occupation which every busy man needs. 



IL Business and Pleasure. Leicester 

 AND Northampton 



Both Leicester and Northampton have been hunt- 

 ing centres in their day. Time was when the " Bell " 

 at Leicester was a favourite resort. Many horses 

 were stabled there. But to Leicester prosperity has 

 since then come in another way, and the town would 

 not now be chosen by any one who desired merely 

 to hunt. Yet, for all that, Leicester has its hunting 

 men, and in increasing numbers. Happily the old 

 prejudice which regarded almost any sport or amuse- 

 ment as unprofessional or unbusiness-like is dying 

 out. The English middle class, thanks to cricket, 

 football, golf, and in many cases hunting, are ceasing 

 to live lives that were truly the dullest possible. 

 Nearly every business man nowadays has some out- 

 door recreation which he makes his hobby. Nor is 



