viii OBSERVATIONS ON FOX-HUNTING 



sucli a valuable liuntsman should have been lost to the hunting- 

 field at the early age of forty, when he probably had many 

 years of good work in him. Though he might even have 

 hunted hounds for another decade, it was perhaps better 

 for him to retire at the summit of his fame, than to linger 

 too long on the stage and face with declining powers the 

 criticism of a new generation, who knew him not in his " salad 

 days." On leaving Essex he obtained the military appoint- 

 ment already mentioned, and got together a pack of hounds 

 in a corner of Staffordshire, but he soon found he had more 

 children than hunters, and finally retired to France, settling 

 at Honfleur, where he anaused himself by trying to teach 

 his new neighbours something about hunting and by writing 

 the valuable pages now offered to us. In the meantime his 

 death warrant had been signed, the fatal malady of cancer 

 having attacked him in the tongue. One remaining flicker 

 must be recorded. " The ruling passion, strong in death " 

 determined the brave fellow, in spite of the acute pain from 

 which he must have been suffering, to return to England 

 and hunt The New Forest Hounds for his friend Mr. NicoU, 

 who was unavoidably called away from his post. He took 

 the horn, and soon pro^xd that he had not lost his cunning ; 

 but it was not to be for long, as he returned to France and 

 died at Rouen in 1829, at the age of 56. 



The last fifty years of The Georgian era witnessed a con- 

 siderable development in the popularity and style of the 

 hunting-field, and The Golden Age of Foxhunting in England 

 could not ha\'e been very far distant when Colonel Cook died. 

 His lifetime, roughly speaking, covered a period during which 

 the sport itself came to be carried out in the same manner 

 that is aimed at to-day, however other agencies may in the 

 meantime have operated to alter its external conditions. 

 The abandoimnent of the slow methods that pre^'ailed in the 

 earlier half of the eighteenth century, and the breeding of 

 hounds and consequently of horses with quality and speed 

 marked the revolution. It was a great discovery that it 



