We now come to the matriculation of the “noble science,” and consider the _quondam_ novice entered to fox-hunting. It would be bootless here to offer any eulogy upon a sport admitted, by authorities allowing no question, to be, in a political as well as a social view, a powerful moral engine. In a letter now before me, which I lately received from a gallant general, himself a master of fox-hounds, he ascribes to a taste for the chase that characteristic manly daring which distinguishes the officers of our service from those of any other. Of all field sports its claims are the most general upon the properties of manhood. The tiger-hunts of the East may appeal more directly to the courage, but with activity and physical endurance they have little or nothing to do. But see the qualities that must combine to form the accomplished fox-hunter. He must be bold, ready, decisive, capable of commanding and sustaining great bodily exertion: he must join unity of purpose to promptness of action; capability of foreseeing events, that he may best turn them to advantage, with a frame and a spirit alike competent to meet and oppose undauntedly difficulties and dangers, how and when they may assail him. I would not have it supposed that I claim for the chase a higher station for enterprise than any other of the adventurous occupations in which we find mankind employed. It would be absurd for an instant, for example, to compare it with that most exciting and magnificent of all the daring offices to which man has ever addressed himself--the South Sea fishing. But as a sport,--an act to which pleasure alone induces him, fox-hunting has nothing at all bearing comparison with it in modern days. To the present fashion of its details we will now turn our consideration.