s. Fox-hunting draws men
from towns, promotes a love of country life, fosters skill, courage,
temper; for a bad-tempered man can never be a good horseman.

"To the right-minded, as many feelings of thankfulness and praise to the
Giver of all good will arise, sitting on a fiery horse, subdued to
courageous obedience for the use of man, while surveying a pack of
hounds ranging an autumnal thicket with fierce intelligence, or looking
down on a late moorland, broken up to fertility by man's skill and
industry, as in a solitary walk by the sea-shore or over a Highland
hill."

Oh, give me the man to whom nought comes amiss,
One horse or another--that country or this;
Through falls and bad starts who undauntedly still
Bides up to this motto, "Be with them I will!"
And give me the man who can ride through a run,
Nor engross to himself all the glory when done;
Who calls not each horse that o'ertakes him a screw;
Who loves a run best when a friend sees it too.

WARBURTON of Arley Hall.

FOOTNOTES:

[202-*] The late Sir Richard Sutton, Master of the Quorn, used to say
that he liked "to stick to the band and keep hold of the bridle," that
is to say, make his pack hold to the line of the fox as long as they
could; but there were times when he could not resist the temptation of a
sure "holloa," and off he would start at a tremendous pace, for he was
always a bruising rider, with a blast or two upon his "little
merry-toned horn" which he had the art of blowing better than other
people. To his intimate friends he used to excuse himself for these
occasional outbreaks by quoting a saying of his old huntsman Goosey
(late the Duke of Rutland's)--for whose opinion on hunting matters he
had a great respect--"I take leave to say, sir, a fox is a very quick
animal, and you must make haste after him during some part of the day,
or you will not catch him."--_Letter from Captain Percy Williams, Master
of the Rufford Hounds, to the Editor._

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ORIGIN OF FOX-HUNTING.

The origin of modern fox-hunting is involved in a degree of obscurity
which can only be attributed to the illiterate character of the
originators, the Squire Westerns, who rode all day, and drank all the
evening. We need the assistance of the ingenious correspondent of _Notes
and Queries_:--

"It is quite certain that the fox was not accounted a noble beast of
chase before the Revolution of 1688; for Gervase