Ladies’ Edinburgh Magazine > Volume 5

7S TJie Ladies' Edinburgh Magazine.
am writing of, such a course would be a very unwise one; for,
alas! wire, that bane of fox-hunting, is by no means un¬
known, and, indeed, part of the country has been compared
to a bird-cage, owing to the frequency of such fences. All
ladies who hunt should be prepared to open a gate occa¬
sionally, or hold the horse of their companion; but more than
this they should not, I tliink, be expected to do. Nothing
can be more annoying than to be pounded in a field witli
apparently a low stone wall all round, but surmounted, on
close inspection, with that hateful wire.
' There is no doubt that for ladies who enjoy good health,
hunting in moderation is a very pleasurable break in the
monotony of the winter; and surely the qualities it calls into
play,—courage, and quick decision, and good judgment,—
will not be bad additions to those characteristics of grace and
softness we so much value. Were hunting, indeed, carried to
excess, other duties would have to be sacrificed to it; but the
large price asked for horses now-a-days, and the expense of
keephig them, would always, except in a few occasional cases,
act as a check, for it is only the inexperienced who think
that one horse can go out every day. I have not touched
on the reverse of the picture,—the many weary days in bad
weather, rewarded with no sport, or the long rides home,
when the hounds have persistently gone exactly where you
did not wish them to go,—in short, on that uncertainty
which gives to all sport its charm, but to fox-hunting
pre-eminently. Any one who doubts the advantages of fox¬
hunting, should go straight from a non-hunting County to
another where hounds are kept. He will probably feel at
once in the latter the increased sociability and friendliness
pervading all classes. And that sisters and daughters should
feel an interest and take a personal sliare in the amusements
of their fathers and brothers, is in the present age not to be
wondered at, and acts very much to the advantage of both
ladies and gentlemen. ' C. 0.'
o^
While agreeing with our young correspondent as to the
increase of the number of ladies who hunt of late years, and
the reasons for it, we should wish to add tliat the chase
was very generally followed by ladies in earlier times, and
then, when sentimental weakness was rather the mode during
the earlier years of this century, it went out of fashion.
Probably, also, for a better reason: formerly there w-ere wide
spaces of waste land in many parts of the country, such as
can now only be found among the rough hills. Fences were