In proportion as his passion for the widow abated and old age came on, he left off fox-hunting; but a hare is not yet safe that sits within ten miles of his house.

There is no kind of exercise which I would so recom5 mend to my readers of both sexes as this of riding, as there is none which so much conduces to health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the idea which I have given of it. Dr. Sydenham is very lavish in its praises; and if the English reader will see Io the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may find them in a book published not many years since, under the title of the Medicina Gymnastica.

ΙΟ

For my own part, when I am in town, for want of these opportunities I exercise myself an hour every morning 15 upon a dumb-bell that is placed in a corner of my room, and pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady and her daughters are so well acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they never come into my room to dis20 turb me whilst I am ringing.

When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition. It is there called the 25 σKιoμaxía, or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and

consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows. I could

wish that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy1 to the public as well as to 5 themselves.

To conclude, as I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as obliged to a double scheme of duties, and think I have not fulfilled the business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labour and exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation.

L.

10

X

XV.

SIR ROGER GOES A-HUNTING X

[No. 116. Friday, July 13, 1711. BUDGELL.]

THOSE who have searched into human nature observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him that he will find out something 15 to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted. I have heard of a gentleman who was under close confinement in the Bastile seven years; during 1 Disagreeable.

which time he amused himself in scattering a few small pins about his chamber, gathering them up again, and placing them in different figures on the arm of a great chair. He often told his friends afterwards, that unless 5 he had found out this piece of exercise, he verily believed he should have lost his senses.

After what has been said, I need not inform my readers that Sir Roger, with whose character I hope they are at present pretty well acquainted, has in his youth gone 10 through the whole course of those rural diversions which the country abounds in, and which seem to be extremely well suited to that laborious industry a man may observe here in a far greater degree than in towns and cities. I have before hinted at some of my friend's exploits: he 15 has in his youthful days taken forty coveys of partridges in a season, and tired many a salmon with a line consisting but of a single hair. The constant thanks and good wishes of the neighbourhood always attended him on account of his remarkable enmity towards foxes, having1 destroyed 20 more of those vermin in one year than it was thought the whole country could have produced. Indeed, the knight does not scruple to own, among his most intimate friends, that in order to establish his reputation this way, he has secretly sent for great numbers of them2 out of other 25 counties, which he used to turn loose about the country by night, that he might the better signalize himself in their destruction the next day. His hunting horses were the 1 Correct the English.

2 Friends or foxes? Correct the sentence.

finest and best managed in all these parts: his tenants are still full of the praises of a gray stone-horse1 that unhappily staked himself several years since, and was buried with great solemnity in the orchard.

Sir Roger, being at present too old for fox-hunting, to 5 keep himself in action has disposed of his beagles and got a pack of stop-hounds. What these want in speed he endeavours to make amends for by the deepness of their mouths and the variety of their notes, which are suited in such manner to each other that the whole cry makes up 10 a complete concert. He is so nice in this particular that a gentleman having made him a present of a very fine hound the other day, the knight returned it by the servant with a great many expressions of civility, but desired him to tell his master that the dog he had sent was indeed a 15 most excellent bass, but that at present he only wanted a counter tenor. Could I believe my friend had ever read Shakespeare, I should certainly conclude he had taken the hint from Theseus, in the Midsummer Night's Dream:

"My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,

So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew:

1 Stallion.

2 Killed by impaling himself on a fence which he was trying to

4 Flews are the chaps or overhanging upper lips of a dog. 5 Of such a sandy colour.

20

5

Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd1 like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouths,2 like bells,
Each under each.3 A cry more tuneable

Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn."

I

Sir Roger is so keen at this sport that he has been out almost every day since I came down ; and upon the chaplain's offering to lend me his easy pad, I was prevailed on yesterday morning to make one of the company. was extremely pleased, as we rid along, to observe the 10 general benevolence of all the neighbourhood towards my friend. The farmers' sons thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old knight as he passed by; which he generally requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry after their fathers and uncles.

15

After we had rid about a mile from home, we came upon a large heath, and the sportsmen began to beat.* They had done so for some time, when, as I was at a little distance from the rest of the company, I saw a hare pop out from a small furze-brake almost under my horse's feet. 20 I marked the way she took, which I endeavoured to make the company sensible of by extending my arm; but to no purpose, till Sir Roger, who knows that none of my extraordinary motions are insignificant, rode up to me,

1 The dew-laps are the folds of skin hanging under the neck in some animals, especially cattle.

2 Incorrectly quoted for "mouth," meaning bark or voice.

3 I.e. at proper musical intervals, like a chime of bells.

4 I.e. to beat the bushes or undergrowth in order to rouse any game hidden there.