ooks beautiful. In the monotony
of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming
life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer.
Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor--never to be
reclaimed, I hope--where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman
sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack--a
study for Landseer.

"But if the morning ride creates unexecuted cabinet pictures and
unwritten sonnets, how delightful 'the find,' 'the run' along
brook-intersected vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and
villages, showing you in byways little gothic churches, ivy-covered
cottages, and nooks of beauty you never dreamed of, alive with startled
cattle and hilarious rustics.

"Talk of epic poems, read in bowers or at firesides, what poet's
description of a battle could make the blood boil in delirious
excitement, like a seat on a long-striding hunter, clearing every
obstacle with firm elastic bounds, holding in sight without gaining a
yard on the flying pack, while the tip of Reynard's tail disappears
over the wall at the top of the hill!

"And, lastly,--tired, successful, hungry, happy,--the return home, when
the shades of evening, closing round, give a fantastic, curious,
mysterious aspect to familiar road-side objects! Loosely lounging on
your saddle, with half-closed eyes, you almost dream--the gnarled trees
grow into giants, cottages into castles, ponds into lakes. The maid of
the inn is a lovely princess, and the bread and cheese she brings
(while, without dismounting, you let your thirsty horse drink his
gruel), tastes more delicious than the finest supper of champagne, with
a _pate_ of tortured goose's liver, that ever tempted the appetite of a
humane, anti-fox hunting, poet-critic, exhausted by a long night of
opera, ballet, and Roman punch.

"Are you fond of agriculture?--You may survey all the progress and
ignorance of an agricultural district in rides across country; you may
sound the depth of the average agricultural mind while trotting from
cover to cover. Are you of a social disposition?--What a fund of
information is to be gathered from the acquaintances made, returning
home after a famous day, 'thirty-five minutes without a check.' In a
word, fox-hunting affords exercise and healthy excitement without
headaches, or heartaches, without late hours, without the 'terrible next
morning' that follows so many town amusement