INTRODUCTION. 31 



when every thing, — education, business, politics, all that 

 concerns or interests mankind, is forced ahead without 

 stay or stop, whether for consideration or repentance, as if 

 by steam and electricity. 



And if it be admitted, as I think it will not be denied, 

 that never was it more needful for the advantage, moral 

 and physical, of all classes, that some comprehensive plan 

 of rational diversion and relaxation from incessant labor 

 and anxiety should be devised and recommended — it will 

 scarcely, I think, be questioned or disputed, that never 

 was there more need that some measure of manliness 

 should be infused into the amusements of the youth of the 

 so-styled upper classes — the jeunesse doree — of the At- 

 lantic cities, some touch of manhood inoculated into the 

 ingenuous youths themselves. 



It is worthy of remark that whatever faults, whatever 

 weaknesses, follies, deficiencies or vices, may be justly laid 

 to the charge of the English gentry and nobility, want of 

 manliness, of pluck to do or to endure, is not of them. 



Of European armies alone the English is officered, 

 from its subalterns to its commanders-in-chief, by the 

 gentry. In France, the nobility have long ceased to be 

 the nobility of the sword ; the splendid hosts of the 

 French are officered entirely by the juste milieu. "While 

 all other aristocracies are wholly effete, effeminate, evi- 

 rated, field sports have preserved the English gentle- 

 man strong, at least, of body, capable to walk, to ride, 

 to endure cold, heat, hunger, weariness, wounds as well — 

 he could not do it better — as the meanest of his fellow- 

 countrymen or fellow-soldiers. 



