"Well, do you know, that after all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot
understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me
both cruel and dangerous."
Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and
delivering them up to the transport of 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 thunderbolts? Danger!
What danger but 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, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and
passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first tallyho,
Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once perhaps in the
whole run, skirting a wood, 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. There they go--prince and
peer, baronet and squire,--the nobility and gentry of England, the
flower of the men of the earth, each on such steed as Pollux never
reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for could we imagine Bucephalus here,
ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very
first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse
for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards,
woods, farm-houses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples,
towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing
them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or
sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo.
Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a
hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current
of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all
astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber
of the five-barred gate--away over the ears flies the ex-rough-rider in
a surprising somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the
gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the
fallow--Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias
most affecting indeed--but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely
drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his
hand to his ear, and with a "hark forward, tan-tivy!" leaves him to
remount, lame and at leisure--and ere the fallen has risen and shook
himself, is round the corner of the white village-church, down the dell,
over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell
up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and
God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death
befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves
better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a
still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and the
physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and
preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak
branches smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely
levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the
brook; let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a sudden wreck; let
old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man
and horse, to banks unscaleable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or
earl's son go sheer over a quarry fifty feet deep, and as many high;
yet, "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows
on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage,--lo! all that remains
together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia,
leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, now strong as
stink, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they,
whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look
in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces,
gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and
warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly,
in his furze bush in the cover,--he is now piece-meal, in about thirty
distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?--
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
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