But a country squire of Mr. Forester’s day even more pithily and quaintly expresses himself as to the advantages to be derived from out-door sports:—“Those useful hours that our fathers employed on horseback in the fields,” he says, “are lost to their posterity between a stinking pair of sheets. Balls and operas, assemblies and masquerades, so exhaust the spirits of the puny creatures over-night, that yawning and chocolate are the main labours and entertainments of the morning. The important affairs of barber, milliner, perfumer, and looking-glass, are their employ till the call to dinner, and the bottle or gaming table demand the tedious hours that intervene before the return of the evening assignations. What wonder, then, if such busy, trifling, effeminate mortals are heard to swear they have no notion of venturing their bodies out-of-doors in the cold air in the morning? I have laughed heartily to see such delicate smock-faced animals judiciously interrupting their pinches of snuff with dull jokes upon fox-hunters; and foppishly declaiming against an art they know no more of than they do of Greek. It cannot be expected they should speak well of a toil they dare not undertake; or that the fine things should be fit to work without doors, which are of the taylor’s creation.” CHAPTER VII. THE WILLEY KENNELS. The Willey Kennels—Colonel Apperley on Hunting a Hundred Years ago—Character of the Hounds—Portraits of Favourites—Original Letters—Style. “Tantivy! the huntsman he starts for the chase, In good humour as fresh as the morn, While health and hilarity beam from his face, At the sound of the mellow-toned horn.” THE style of hunting in vogue in Squire Forester’s day was, in the opinion of authorities on the subject, even more favourable to the development of bodily strength and endurance than now. The late Mr. Thursfield, of Barrow, was wont to say that it was no unusual thing to see Moody taking the hounds to cover before daylight in a morning. The Squire himself, like most other sportsmen of the period, was an early man. [Picture: Childers, Pilot, and Pigmy]