7G RACECOUESE AND COVEET SIDE. 



extremely all the summer. A new pair of top 

 Loots is a pretty toy, and more decorative in a 

 gentleman's dressing-room than any other kind 

 of garment. " It is again," Mr. Trollope declares, 

 " pleasant for such a man to talk of his horses, 

 especially to young women with whom, perhaps, 

 the ascertained fact of the winter employment 

 does give him some credit." To pose as a hunt- 

 ing man amuses him and flatters his vanity ; but 

 there are compensating disadvantages. He must 

 feel that he is not the thing he gives himself 

 out to be, and, feeling this, can hardly help 

 experiencing a certain shame ; nor can hunting 

 talk be wholly agreeable to a man who does not 

 really ride to hounds, though he sees the pack 

 he nominally hunts with at the meet, trots down 

 roads and lanes, or over a few fields with them 

 w^hen they are going to draw a covert, and may 

 by luck casually come across them in the course 

 of the day. 



This man hates riding to hounds in the proper 

 sense of the term, and for the proceedings of the 

 pack, apart from their function as leaders of the 

 field, he cares nothing. He is, indeed, too 

 anxious to watch the hounds, for there is always 

 the risk of finding his way into a field, and not 

 being so easily able to find his way out again. 

 Such a man was criticised by an old Duke of 



