Ii., Page 56.

[256] AN EARL ON FOX-HUNTING.

The Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham addressed the following letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, in May 1870: - Sir, - The fox is tolerated, nay preserved (under the penalty of conventional ostracism against his slayers,) because he is the only animal with whose intellect man may measure himself upon equal terms without an overwhelming sense of the odds in his favour. The lion, the elephant, the ibex, the chamois, and the red deer are beasts of chase falling before man, but the fox alone can cope with him in point of intellect and sagacity, and put him to all his shifts. It is this ingredient in fox-hunting - viz: the consciousness of having to do with a foe worthy of him, which brings men of all ages, sorts, kinds, intellects, characters, and professions to the covert side, uniting together occasionally as odd an assemblage as ever went into the ark. No man, when he puts on his top-boots in the morning, can say whether he may not be about to assist at a run which may live in story like the Billesdon Coplow or the Trojan War, and of which it shall be sufficient, not only to the fortunate sportsman himself but to his descendants of the third and fourth generation, to say - he was there!

Villiers, Cholmondeley, and Forester made such sharp play, Not omitting Germaine, never seen till to-day: Had you jug'd of these four by the trim of their pace At Bib'ry you'd thought they had been riding a race. Billesdon Coplow.

"Their fame lives still. But what, O ye sentimentalists! would ye prepare both for fox and fox-hunter? If the fox was not regarded as the only animal possessed of these talents and capabilities, he must shortly rank as a sneaking little robber of hen-roosts, the foe of the good wife and gamekeeper, and become as extinct as a dodo. Were the fox himself consulted, I am sure that he would prefer to this ignoble fate the present pleasant life which he is in the habit of leading upon the sole condition of putting forth all his talent and dying game when wanted."

[257] I am indebted for a deal of information contained in this communication to McPherson LeMoyne, Esq., Seigneur of Crane Island, P.Q., and lately President of the Montreal Club for the protection of fish and game.

[258] Chs. Panet, Esq., ex-member for the County of Quebec.

[259] The sanguinary battle of Fontenoy was fought on the 11th May, 1745. The Duke of Cumberland, subsequently surnamed "the butcher," for his brutality at Culloden, commanding the English, &c, the French led by Marechal de Saxe. This defeat, which took place under the eye of Louis XV cost the British 4041, their allies the Hanoverians, 2762 and the Dutch 1541 men. Success continued to attend the French arms at Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, and Dendermond, which were captured - (Lord Mahon) Wolfe, Murray and Townshend were at Fontenoy.

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