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love of chivalry; and it was he who first made
me realise how the ideals of chivalry, if taken
to heart, can ennoble human conduct in any
path of life. Scott's own life illustrated this
and I am sure that no knight of old ever carried
under his armour a nobler heart than that
which beat under the tartan plaid of Walter
Scott."
Sir Nizamat Jung like his hero, Sir Walter
Scott, preserved his health by regular hard exer-
cise, such as riding and walking and shooting.
He loved horses. " I loved them as a boy,
(when my little pony represented the whole equine
race to me), and I love them now when I am
obliged to give up riding owing to my venerable
age/' he wrote in 1932. Some friends joined him
in his rides—" Ranji '* for example, and they were
happy on hired hacks, and " it was fearfully
delightful/* to quote his own words, <c dodging
about through dark lanes to avoid the Proctor
and his hounds when we happened to return late
of an evening."
After his return to India in 1896, riding and
shooting became his chief holiday amusements.
" Life in the jungle was a romance, " says he in
one of his jottings, " from the expectation of ad-
venture. There are minds and there are moods, "
he explains," in which real scenes are transfigured
by imagination into something visionary and
entrancing. The desire of killing a tiger or a
panther was not the real motive with me : the
preparation, the expectation, the excitement,