Prints in the British Museum" (1877, III, ii). Mr. Stephens guided us to the Old Whig (February 26, 1735-6), apparently the only authority. The Old Whig said: "We hear that a strong water shop was lately opened in Southwark with this inscription on the sign "(as above). Southwark suggests Kent Street, which, from the days of Henry II to those of Charles Dickens, enjoyed the worst of reputations. On one single day in 1736, the good people of Kent Street applied for no fewer than forty gin licences. We may owe the time-honoured legend to one of these vendors of" strong water" or a passing wag may have scribbled it in chalk. However that may be, we have no proof that the lines were common or characteristic. In 1743, the Bishop of Oxford could speak of the straw (clean or foul) as a thing of the past, and the Bishop of Salisbury could say that great numbers of people were yet untainted. London was not heedless of the evil. The campaign against gin began not later than 1721. By 1751 the worst was over. Gin was not the only drink. Before 1729, Defoe wrote: Tea and wine are all we seem anxious for." A few years later the Old Whig was uneasy because "the use of this liquor (tea) was become so general even among the lowest class." In 1734, another writer asserted that a poor woman has tea every morning for breakfast-except water, the cheapest drink she can get.' In the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1737 (p. 214), is a complaint that "it is now become a part of the covenant with labouring servants truely that they must be allowed tea for breakfast." The drinking of water found some favour. Thomson praised it. A certain " Mr. Web" practised it-" a Mr. Web, who was (the Earl of Sandwich said in the House of Lords, on February 15, 1743), I believe, the founder of our new sect of water-drinkers." More might be written of Thomson as a humanitarian than as a water-drinker; but with the space at our command, all that we can do is to ask our readers to forget all that for which Europe once praised him, and to take careful note of every word or phrase of his that refers to matters social. Not a few may be found in the" Seasons." The second canto of the " Castle of Indolence," recounting, as it does, the achievements of the Knight of Arts and Industry, is like an harmonious prelude of the " class war." His "Prospect "-neglected by the literary critic because it is not poetry, and by the social critic because it is not prose-contains, especially in its last three hundred lines, a clear and distinct anticipation-or, rather, an amazing forecast-of Victorian and more recent legislation. It was an exaggeration to say that Massillon used the language of the Revolutionists. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Thomson used the language of Cobden and Ruskin, and of Keir Hardie also. His contemporaries admired his descriptions of nature. To his compassion for human nature they gave little heed. Religion had lost its old enthusiasm ; but personal piety was not extinct. Sermons were abundantly advertised in the newspapers. Magazines found it worth their while to publish in every issue articles which, if not very spiritual, were certainly religious. Defoe, who knew his public, infused religion into "Robinson Crusoe." Mandeville, as we have seen, found enough of " the common cant of religion " to jeer at it. Handel's oratorios suggest that London had not quite forgotten its Bible. The demand for books of devotion was great. Nelson's " Companion," published in 1704, reached its sixteenth edition in 1736. Of the " Imitation of Christ," thirty-six editions were published between 1695 and 1746. Beveridge's works must have been among the "bestsellers." The" Whole Duty of Man," the " Pilgrim's Progress," and Ken's "Manual" must have been constantly asked for. Watts was much read in other circles than his own, and it was at this time that he and Ken gave an impulse to that singing of hymns which became so common in the congregations and homes of the people. Londoners heard Whitefield and Wesley peacefully, and even gladly. Whatever its works, the first half of the eighteenth century was justified of its children. We pass over Bellers, and Hanway, and Coram, and Oglethorpe, and other men of much service and little renown. But those decadent fifty years gave birth to Garrick and Johnson and Goldsmith and Burke; to Hogarth and Reynolds and Gainsborough; to Pitt and Wolfe and Clive and Hastings and Cook; to Fielding and Smollett; to Hume and Gibbon and Adam Smith; to Arkwright and Watt; to Whitefield and the Wesleys; to John Howard; and, beyond the seas, to Franklin and Washington. Berkeley thought that the England of George I was on the brink of ruin. To-day others may be as fearful for the England of George V. They may take courage. Two hundred years hence some one may write that our own time was prolific of great men. We are, however, dealing with London and not with the virility of the English race. Writing of the London of 1711, Tindal remarked that when things are bad, we are apt to think that they have never been worse. It is no reflection on the Londoners of old if we say that London has always been worse than it is now. But the converse of this would be not less true, and much less ungracious. London's to-days have always been better than its yesterdays, and we may reasonably hope that its to-morrows will be better still. As Mrs. George proves, Londoners quickly respond to improvements in their environment; but every improvement is an effect as well as a cause. The Londoner's freedom of personal initiative has been—and must continue to be-a main cause of the improvement and uplifting of our great city. W. J. PAYLING WRIGHT FOXHUNTING, PAST AND PRESENT 1. Thoughts on Hunting. By PETER BECKFORD. E. Easton. 1781. Records of the Old Charlton Hunt. By the EARL OF MARCH, M.V.O., D.S.O. Elkin Matthews. 1910. 2. 3. 4. The Complete Foxhunter. By C. RICHARDSON. Methuen. 1909. The Harboro' Country. By CHARLES SIMPSON. The Bodley Head. 1926. 5. Squire Osbaldeston: His Autobiography. Edited by E. D. CUMING. The Bodley Head. 1926. 6. My Life and Times. By NIMROD. Edited, with additions, by E. D. CUMING. Blackwood. 1927. FOXH 'OXHUNTING, in its proper and modern sense, has endured in England since the reign of Charles II. It will probably continue for another hundred years; but the area in which the sport may be carried on is being steadily circumscribed, and those who are now young, and their successors, will undoubtedly see many changes for the worse during the next fifty years in this, the greatest and most inspiring of all English field-sports. That hunting will die very hard is an indisputable fact. It is a sport which has a wonderful appeal to the average healthy man and woman, whether rich or poor, as may be seen any winter's day in the English countryside. It is indubitably a natural instinct of mankind; and the great Jorrocks' description of it," the image of war, without its guilt, and only twenty-five per cent. of its danger," is very hard to better. In the days when wild game still abounded in England, the "beasts of Venery" were hart, hind, hare, boar and wolf. Then came fallow buck, doe, fox, marten and roe deer, which were "beasts of chase." Beasts of Venery were "moved" (roused) with the lymer or lyme-hound and chased with the pack; while Beasts of Chase were found by the pack and set going (enquillez). Foxes were then looked upon mainly as vermin, to be hunted to their earths and there either killed with terriers or dug out and knocked on the head. The hare was regarded by our medieval ancestors with much more respect. William Twici, huntsman to Edward II, who wrote a short treatise on hunting (Le Art de Vénerie) in Norman-French, first translated and printed by the late Sir Henry Dryden, in 1844,* opens his essay with this animal. "And why, Sir," he says, " will you begin with the hare, rather than with any other beast? I will tell you. Because she is the most marvellous which is on this earth." Twici gives various hunting cries, some of which are still in use; such, for instance, as "Forward, sir, forward!" and "Sha-hou!" which I take to be the modern "So ho!" on finding a hare. “Hou, hou!" another cry, may now be looked upon as obsolete. Yet I can remember, twenty years ago, when out with the Hailsham Harriers, an old-fashioned pack then hunting Pevensey Marsh, some of the Sussex farmers and old country folk still used the cry "Hou, hou!" to call upon and encourage hounds. Tally ho!" I think, undoubtedly comes from the Norman French. In" Le Trésor de Vénerie," a rare French hunting MS., written by Hardouin, Seigneur de Fontaines Guérin, Anjou, in or about 1394, the author says that you should sound the chase when the stag is on its feet, and that if anyone sees it he should cry Thiaulau,-which, in my judgment, is undoubtedly our modern" Tally-ho." Here is the Seigneur's own early French verse: Après vous deves corner chasse, Thiaulau doit tantost crier. Hardouin's quaint MS., written while the Seigneur was imprisoned in the Castle of Meragues, is embellished by drawings of the chase, with the necessary horn music, noted in the ancient fashion, shown at the top of each picture. This very curious work was first published in 1856 by Mons. M. H. Michelant, and I count myself fortunate to be the possessor of a copy of so rare a book. Until Somervile published his fine poem, "The Chace," in 1735, and Beckford printed his " Thoughts on Hunting,” in 1781, all the honour and the credit of the best treatises concerning hunting lay with the French. The celebrated" Livre de Chasse," of Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix et Béarn, a magnificent illuminated MS., produced between 1359 and 1394, is easily the *According to Sir Henry Dryden, Twici and other sportsmen of his time hunted the fox on foot. |