PEESIDENT-THE EAEL OF CLAEENDOH. 
15 
and although it is just possible that by “ sitting on one’s stool and 
never going to sea” one may become “ruler of the Queen’s Navee,”— 
that there may be mighty minds in puny and sickly frames,—yet it 
certainly is more probable where intellect and physique exist, that 
they have been inherited, and more likely that they will be handed 
down to posterity. And if by this means we secure or maintain 
that great desideratum, health, we shall also command its con¬ 
comitant—contentment, without which it is impossible that life 
should be either pleasant or useful. 
It savours somewhat of an empty boast to say that an English¬ 
man can compete successfully with three or four of any other 
nation, although it is said that an Irish soldier in the Crimean 
war, who brought in three Russian prisoners, in reply to an inquiry 
how he had captured them, answered: “Sure I surrounded them.” 
Still, I have always thought and shall always think that he is 
more than a match for any one , and that this is the result of his 
never knowing when he is beaten, from the stout heart which 
never quails when face to face with danger, and from the stamina 
and pluck which athletic pursuits from generation to generation 
have engendered and fostered. 
Ladies and gentlemen, I hardly hope to have amused, much less 
to have edified you; my ideas concerning the chase, its influence, 
and its effect may be strained, but of this I am confident, that, 
were it not for the sports of the field, effeminacy and deterioration 
would ensue, and there might be some truth in the accusation 
which sometimes even now is hurled against us, that we are only 
a nation of shopkeepers. Under these circumstances it is to be 
earnestly hoped that the day may be far distant when no longer 
“ the horn of the hunter is heard on the hill.” If that day ever 
comes it will mean that sloth has taken the place of energy. If 
we no longer receive and confer those benefits which are derived 
from a participation in the mad revelry of the chase, we shall be 
wanting in part of our national character, and we shall go a long 
way towards losing that place in the scale of nations which it 
concerns both our dignity and our interest to occupy. 
