In hawking especially women were proficient, and one scribe even tells us that they excelled their husbands and brothers in the knowledge and exercise of the art of falconry, from which, however, he deduces the ungallant conclusion that the pastime was to be regarded as "frivolous and effeminate." At the time of the great revival of letters, the art of falconry was at the height of its popularity, and both in England and in other countries of Europe it was the rule for women of noble birth to train, handle, and fly their own hawks. It was the seventeenth century which saw the decay of this sport as a royal and aristocratic amusement, for though in the early years of the age it was still the most popular form of recreation in the field, by the time the following century had dawned it was all but extinct. After this, during the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that the prowess of women in the field suffered an eclipse, and the few bold spirits who from time to time broke through the trammels that restrained their less enterprising sisters, were regarded with a certain amount of suspicion and distrust. To come to the days when the writings of Sir Walter Scott opened up a new field of enchantment to his readers, we know that his creation of Di Vernon needed excuse at the hands of the author for her sport-loving tastes, as the presumption was against her being a true specimen of the "womanly" woman, in the best sense of the word. Whyte Melville, entirely devoted to the chase as he was himself, is yet doubtful of the place of his heroines in the hunting field, and in his well-known novel, _Kate Coventry_, he seems to consider it a reasonable condition on the part of the man Kate is about to marry, that she should give up hunting when she becomes his bride. In the pages of Surtees, which give such a vivid picture of the fox-hunter's life in the first half of the century, the woman who hunts is nearly always an adventuress, while in the social sketches of Trollope sport has no place in the life of his otherwise charming heroines. [Illustration]