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any entertainment that is quite harmless because it is not to my taste."

Dean Milner gave up playing at cards long before he entertained any thoughts respecting their propriety or the reverse, because, he says, "it ran away with time which would otherwise have been better employed." He further used to add, "my fingers were so often stained by operations in the laboratory, that I was really ashamed to exhibit them."

But although, from religious and other reasons, card-playing has found antagonists among our eminent men in past years, it has afforded harmless and beneficial amusement to the majority of our intellectual workers. So long as prudence, and moderation, influence this pleasing diversion, there is little fear of its forfeiting the popularity which it has rightly earned.

VOL. I.

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CHAPTER IV.

FIELD SPORTS.

Duke of Wellington-Sir C. J. Napier-Peter BeckfordDuke of Cleveland-William Pitt-Lord Raglan-Lord Eldon-C. J. Fox-Lord Cardigan-Marquis Clanricarde-Anthony Trollope-Charles Kingsley-Whyte Melville - Assheton Smith-Earl Fitzwilliam - John Leech-Lord Mayo-Lord Fitzhardinge-Earl WiltonSir Tatton Sykes-John Metcalf-Rev. John RussellSir Francis Chantrey-Sheridan-Sydney Smith-Lord Malmesbury-Horatio Ross-W. E. Forster-Lord Eversley-Lord Westbury-Tom Hood.

THE pleasures of the chase, whilst forming some of the most charming scenes in the literature of the past, have always held one of the highest places of honour amongst our national sports. The records of the hunting-field of to-day simply re-echo the practices of bygone years, when the same enthusiastic love of adventure afforded an attractive inducement, for leaving the weightier matter of life, in search of the pleasures of the field.

Thus, in the fourteenth century, an occupant of

the Episcopal bench, Reginald Brian, Bishop of Worcester, writes to his brother, Bishop of St. David's, to remind him of a promised gift of some hounds. His heart languishes, he says, for their arrival. "Let them come, then, oh! reverend father, without delay; let my woods re-echo with the music of their cry and the cheerful notes of the horn, and let the walls of my palace be decorated with the trophies of the chase."

The Duke of Wellington, following the example of Edward III.—who when engaged in the French war had with him his staghounds and harriers— throughout the Peninsula campaign, kept a pack of hounds at headquarters, chasing the foxes quite as vigorously and successfully as he did the French. According to Mr. Gleig, "he caused his hounds to travel in the rear of the army, and had more than one day's hunting in the intervals of battles. They were regularly kennelled in Toulouse, where many a French gentleman saw for the first time-himself vainly striving to keep pace with the field-what English fox-hunting was. Indeed, almost to the close of his life, he was attracted by the hunting-field; and in the year 1826 he urges as an excuse for not answering a letter of Mr. Robinson's that "the usual sports of the autumn occupied him."

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One would naturally have supposed that Sir

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Charles James Napier was an enthusiastic sportsman, judging from his love of horse-exercise; but, great as would otherwise have been the animation of the chase, his gentle feelings forbade the taste.

"We are all," he wrote in the year 1843 of himself and his brothers, "a hot, violent crew, with the milk of human kindness; though we were all fond of hunting, fishing, and shooting, yet all gave them up when young because we had no pleasure in killing little animals. Lately, in the camp, a hare got up, the greyhounds pursued, and the men all shouted to aid the dogs. My sorrow was great and I rode away; yet at dinner I ate a poor fowl. It is not principle, therefore, on which we act, it is painful feeling. As to cathunting and dog-fighting, feeling and principle unite to condemn. A domestic animal confides in you, and is at your mercy; a wild animal has some fair play, a domestic one none. Cat-hunters and dog-hunters are, therefore, not only cruel, but traitors. No polished gentleman does these things."

Peter Beckford, a type of the best class of sportsmen at the close of the last century, was a ripe scholar, and an accomplished fox-hunter. He regarded the killing of the fox as the main end, and object of a day's hunting, and thus writes :

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'Sport is but a secondary consideration with a true fox-hunter. The first is the killing of the fox; hence arises the eagerness of the pursuit and the chief pleasure of the chase. I confess I consider blood so necessary, to a pack of foxhounds, that I always return home better pleased with an indifferent chase, with death at the end of it, than with the best chase possible if it ends with the loss of the fox. I remember to have heard an odd anecdote of the late Duke of R-, who was very popular in his neighbourhood. A butcher at Lyndhurst, a lover of the sport, as often as he heard the hounds return from hunting, came out to meet them, and never failed to ask the Duke what sport he had had.

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Very good, I thank you, honest friend.” "Has your Grace killed a fox ?"

"No, we have had a good run, but we have not killed."

"Pshaw!" cried the butcher, with an arch look, pointing at him at the same time with his finger; and this was so constantly repeated that the Duke, when he had not killed a fox, used to say he was afraid to meet his butcher."

A loving patron of English sports was the Duke of Cleveland, and never was he happier than when out with his hounds. Some idea of his success in the hunting-field may be gathered

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