A HUNTING STABLE. 47 



wood-roads, or througli the opener tracts of -woodland, 

 cutting off angles and keeping in the inner curve of 

 arcs, so as to hold the unseen pack within hearing, is 

 the acme of excellence in the sportsmanship of tho 

 American fox-chase. 



All this was of course well known to Percy Fairfax, 

 who was not only thoroughly practical as a sportsman 

 in his native land, but well read, and thoroughly im- 

 bued, though theoretically only, in all the principles 

 of the science of sportsmanship abroad. He was a 

 capital horseman, as a horseman ; and there was pro- 

 bably no single leap, however dangerous or awkward, 

 at which he would not have put his horse as well, and 

 carried him as clearly over it, as the best rider in all 

 Leicestershire. But to take one fence at your ease, 

 and to take a long succession at your speed, as you 

 may chance to find them in your line, out of bad 

 ground, perhaps with your horse blown or laboring, 

 are two things widely different. Nay, even to gallop 

 a horse across the mole-hill knotted pastures, and the 

 deep meadow-land of Leicestershire and the vale of 

 Belvoir, as he must be galloped, not cantered, or held 

 hard-in-hand, in order to keep a place with hounds, is 

 a thing to be learned, and that difficulty, not to be 

 hit off at first sight by a tyro. 



Nor was this, either, unknown to Fairfax ; and, in- 

 deed, had it been in the man ever to be diffident or 

 shy, or distrustful of his own powers, he would have 

 been something nervous at exhibiting himself in a 

 capacity so strange and so new to himself, before a 

 field so exquisitely mounted, so perfectly accomplished 

 in the art, so critically fastidious in their tastes and 

 judgments, and so likely to regard with polite and 

 courteous tranquillity of sarcasm any failure on the 

 part of a foreigner so bold as to enroll himself a fol- 

 lower of their more than royal pastime, and so unskill 

 ful as to fail of going through with it. 



