“The handsome manner in which my health has been proposed by our worthy and estimable host, and the flattering reception it has met with from you, merit my warmest acknowledgments.  I should, indeed, be unworthy of the land which gave me birth, were I insensible of the honour which has just been done me by so enlightened and distinguished an assembly as the present.  My friend, Mr. Jorrocks, has been pleased to designate me as one of the most distinguished sportsmen of the day, a title, however, to which I feel I have little claim:  but this I may say, that I have portrayed our great national sports in their brightest and most glowing colours, and that on sporting subjects my pen shall yield to none (cheers).  I have ever been the decided advocate of many sports and exercises, not only on account of the health and vigour they inspire, but because I feel that they are the best safeguards on a nation’s energies, and the best protection against luxury, idleness, debauchery, and effeminacy (cheers).  The authority of all history informs us, that the energies of countries flourished whilst manly sports have flourished, and decayed as they died away (cheers).  What says Juvenal, when speaking of the entry of luxury into Rome?”

  Saevior armis
  Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.

“And we need only refer to ancient history, and to the writings of Xenophon, Cicero, Horace, or Virgil, for evidence of the value they have all attached to the encouragement of manly, active, and hardy pursuits, and the evils produced by a degenerate and effeminate life on the manners and characters of a people (cheers).  Many of the most eminent literary characters of this and of other countries have been ardently attached to field sports; and who, that has experienced their beneficial results, can doubt that they are the best promoters of the mens sana in corpore sano—­the body sound and the understanding clear (cheers)?  Gentlemen, it is with feelings of no ordinary gratification that I find myself at the social and truly hospitable board of one of the most distinguished ornaments of one of the most celebrated Hunts in this great country, one whose name and fame have reached the four corners of the globe—­to find myself after so long an absence from my native land—­an estrangement from all that has ever been nearest and dearest to my heart—­once again surrounded by these cheerful countenances which so well express the honest, healthful pursuits of their owners.  Let us then,” added Nimrod, seizing a decanter and pouring himself out a bumper, “drink, in true Kentish fire, the health and prosperity of that brightest sample of civic sportsmen, the great and renowned JOHN JORROCKS!”

Immense applause followed the conclusion of this speech, during which time the decanters buzzed round the table, and the glasses being emptied, the company rose, and a full charge of Kentish fire followed; Mr. Jorrocks, sitting all the while, looking as uncomfortable as men in his situation generally do.