day in a slow procession through gates, “craning” at the smallest obstacles, or dismounting and “leading over.”  No; hard riding is the best antidote in the world for the luxurious tendency of these days.  A hundred years ago, when the sport of fox-hunting was in its infancy and modern conditions of pace were unknown, there was less need for this kind of recreation, “the image of war without its guilt, and only twenty-five per cent of its danger.”  For there was real fighting enough to be done in olden times; and amongst hunting folk, though there was much drinking, there was little luxury.  Therefore our fox-hunting ancestors were content to enjoy slow hunting runs, and small blame to them!  But those who are fond of lamenting the modern spirit of the age, which prefers the forty minutes’ burst over a severe country to a three hours’ hunting run, are apt to lose sight of the fact that in these piping times of peace, without the risks of sport mankind is liable to degenerate towards effeminacy.  For this reason in the following poem I have purposely taken up the cudgels for that somewhat unpopular class of sportsmen, the “thrusters” of the hunting field.  They are unpopular with masters of hounds because they ride too close to the pack; but as a general rule they are the only people who ever see a really fast run.  In Shakespeare’s time hounds that went too fast for the rest of the pack were “trashed for over-topping,” that is to say, they were handicapped by a strap attached to their necks.  In the same way in every hunt nowadays there are half a dozen individuals who have reduced riding to hounds to such an art that no pack can get away from them in a moderately easy country.  These “bruisers” of the hunting field ought to be made to carry three stone dead weight; they should be “trashed for overtopping.”  However, as Brooksby has tersely put it, “Some men hunt to ride and some ride to hunt; others, thank Heaven! double their fun by doing both.”  There are many, many fine riders in England who will not be denied in crossing a stiff country, and who at the same time are interested in the hounds and in the poetry of sport:  men to whom the mysteries of scent and of woodcraft, as well as the breeding and management of hounds, are something more than a mere name:  men who in after days recall with pleasure “how in glancing over the pack they have been gratified by the shining coat, the sparkling eye—­sure symptoms of fitness for the fight;—­how when thrown in to covert every hound has been hidden; how every sprig of gorse has bristled with motion; how when viewed away by the sharp-eyed whipper-in, the fox stole under the hedge; how the huntsman clapped round, and with a few toots of his horn brought them out in a body; how, without tying on the line, they ‘flew to head’; how, when they got hold of it, they drove it, and with their heads up felt the scent on both sides of the fence; how with hardly a whimper they turned with him, till at the end of fifty minutes they threw up; how the patient huntsman stood still; how they made their own cast:  and how when they came back on his line, their tongues doubled and they marked him for their own.”  To such good men and true I dedicate the following lines:—­