" THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN." 363 



further illustration of steadiness of purpose and fixed 

 principles altogether. 



Thus the sportsman of 1746, though he perfectly 

 well knew how to get a hunter into that state, for I 

 will not say condition^ that enabled the horse to do 

 such work as those days required of him, would be 

 little better than the pig of fixed principles, if he 

 allowed his estimation of condition to be fixed on the 

 estimate of what condition formerly was, or rather 

 on what was then called condition. What we now 

 call condition was then only known in racing stables. 

 This did not come from our ancestors knowing less 

 about the horse than we do ; nor was the knowledge 

 of condition perhaps less understood than it is now 

 where it was wanted. But why the condition of 

 hunters was not understood was, mainly because our 

 present condition was not then as it is now, indis- 

 pensible for hunters; consequently, trainiug hunters 

 was unthought of. 



There can be no doubt but the training, now so 

 indispensable to the hunter who is to go a burst over 

 Leicestershire, would, if we only wanted him to take 

 a ring with harriers, enable him to do this with much 

 greater ease to himself than a better horse who was 

 only in common hare-hunting, condition could do 

 the same thing, and that if our ancestors' horses had 

 been in the condition that ours are now, the pace 

 hounds then went would have been merely play to 

 them; but we must not on that account set down 

 sportsmen of days gone bye as boobies in respect 

 of stable management : we merely do what in fact 

 they did ; we get horses into that state that answers 

 our purpose. And though I always held it as a 

 maxim that a hunter should very much approach the 



