CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



their high condition — for every throbbing vein is 

 visible — at the first full burst of that maddening cry, 

 and letting loose to their delight the living thunder- 

 bolts? Danger! What danger but of breaking their 

 own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? 

 And what right have you to complain of that, lying 

 all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and 

 snorting half-asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a 

 whole street? What though it be but a smallish, red- 

 dish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, 

 and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? 

 After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till 

 he is run in upon — once, perhaps, in the whole run, 

 skirting a w^ood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea 

 that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm 

 of canine music — worthy, both, of the largest lion 

 that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping 

 at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African 

 sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in 

 the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of 

 Three Hundred. Once off and away — while wood and 

 welkin rings — and nothing is felt — nothing is imaged 

 in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, 

 dikes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, 

 and all the impediments reared in the way of so many 

 rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an 

 enclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Christian country. 

 [45] 



