Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine > Volume 5

Country Subjects and Pursuits. 73
Countrg Subjects antj pursuits,
IL—rOX-HUXTING FOR LADIES.
Fox-nuxTiNG cannot be logically defended. It is better to
concede that at once, so as to turn the tlank of all arguments
against its uselessness, its wastefulness, its risks. ' Much
ado about nothing' might be the motto inscribed on its
stationery and decorations—the motto that would suit its
serious business, and the grave deliberations, hopes and
fears, and anxieties of its managers and employ^. But
while England and Ireland remain what they are; while
wealth abounds, and health drives our young men—and
young women too—to strong exercise; while winters are
dull and open, and meads are green, and horses can gallop,
there must be fox-hunting. I have expressly omitted Scot¬
land, because, much as the Scotch like it, they are also much
aware of the expense, and their canny thrift might train them
to do without it. The fact is, that civilization has, in Great
Britain, reached a point utterly destructive of the hunter's
life, which, like all thoroughly natural forms of honest
vigorous work, has a wonderful charm about it. Fox-hunting
is the greatest testimony to this charm, the greatest protest
now in existence against advanced civilization. Our modern
improvements and new appliances for luxury have to devote
themselves to reproduce by art a shadow of the simple,
natural occupation of man in the dawn of the race. We are
apt to pity those jolly fellows, our prehistoric ancestors, who
ran wild in primaeval forests, or followed the chase over
boundless deserts, winning food and clothing by hunting,
and fighting for life with beasts of prey. But we pay
them the compliment of imitation—an imitation with many
advantages, we suspect, over the original. Our modern fox¬
hunting is the most glorious make-believe going: it is absurd
to think of it as connected with roughness or slaughter; it
has no destructive element about it. As a pastoral poem
of genteel shepherds and shepherdesses, with rose-twined
crooks and a pet lamb or two, to the real, heavily-worked
shepherd out on the great moors among great flocks, so
is fox - hunting to the real hunter's toil: it has the
poetry, the dash, some of the danger, without the coarse¬
ness, the roughness, and the labour. Nobody is going
to kill bears, wolves, or tigers, or to take away any
life save the one possibly forfeited to the dogs. The