222

BRIEF THOUGHTS ON HUNTING.

It is hardJy possible for any man of sedatehabits, whose employment is of a sedentary kind,and whose only movements arc from the desk tothe table, to imagine the joyous hilarity, the ar-dent feelings, the breathless ecstasy, that belongsto the pleasures of the chase. Motion is imaginedby some to be favourable to thought: they tell usthat the wings of imagination are assisted by it.Thus a walk may be best suited to musing melan-choly or to sober prose; a trot to something ofa more lively character; while the gallop or therace, partaking more of the hero or the conqueror,will generate, perhaps, the thoughts of war andmad ambition. But whether this theory be trueor not, certain it is, that the paces of Pegasus aresometimes as rapid as the fleetest courser; andthat the hunter after literary fame, whether onhack or hobby, often experiences perils that theboldest sportsman would never dare to encounter.

Q