THE fox-hunter loves the morning with a cloudy sky and a touch of east in the wind, and, luckily for him, he lives in a land where he can get it. From November till April he is happy to live without the sun, and it is the little red rover that makes him more than content to stay at home, while his unlucky compatriots are chasing the sun to Monte Carlo or the banks of the Nile. There is a charm about English country life that is a full compensation for all the discomforts of a fickle climate. The inconstancy of the sun, and the variableness of our weather, prevent life in England from ever being monotonous. A hunting-man cannot go to bed with any certainty of being free from an exciting anxiety about the weather, any more than he can go to cover with any confidence that scent will be good or that a fox will run straight. He can get between the sheets, and let his fancy picture an ideal day’s sport on the morrow, and himself being well carried over the cream of the country; and yet, when he wakes, he hurries downstairs and on to the lawn with a stick, to poke about to see whether it will be possible to hunt at all. If we could hook a salmon every time we made a good cast; if we could curl up the rocketing pheasant every time we pressed the trigger; if we could kill our stag every time we beaded him, there would be no pleasure and no satisfaction in such pursuits. No sport can give a greater variety of incident than fox-hunting, or such wondrous transformation scenes. Chance is the magic attraction of such pursuits; the element of the unknown the soul of all adventure.