land? The French countryman cannot
be made to understand it. You cannot induce him to believe that if
he held land in England, looking to make his rent from tender young
grass-fields and patches of sprouting corn, he would be powerless to
keep out intruders, if those intruders came in the shape of a rushing
squadron of cavalry, and called themselves a hunt. To him, in accordance
with his existing ideas, rural life under such circumstances would be
impossible. A small pan of charcoal, and an honourable death-bed, would
give him relief after his first experience of such an invasion.

Nor would the English farmer put up with the invasion, if the English
farmer were not himself a hunting man. Many farmers, doubtless, do not
hunt, and they bear it, with more or less grace; but they are inured to
it from their infancy, because it is in accordance with the habits and
pleasures of their own race. Now and again, in every hunt, some man
comes up, who is, indeed, more frequently a small proprietor new to the
glories of ownership, than a tenant farmer, who determines to vindicate
his rights and oppose the field. He puts up a wire-fence round his
domain, thus fortifying himself, as it were, in his citadel, and defies
the world around him. It is wonderful how great is the annoyance which
one such man may give, and how thoroughly he may destroy the comfort of
the coverts in his neighbourhood. But, strong as such an one is in his
fortress, there are still the means of fighting him. The farmers around
him, if they be hunting men, make the place too hot to hold him. To them
he is a thing accursed, a man to be spoken of with all evil language,
as one who desires to get more out of his land than Providence, that is,
than an English Providence, has intended. Their own wheat is exposed,
and it is abominable to them that the wheat of another man should be
more sacred than theirs.

All this is not sufficiently remembered by some of us when the period
of the year comes which is trying to the farmer's heart, when the young
clover is growing, and the barley has been just sown. Farmers, as
a rule, do not think very much of their wheat. When such riding is
practicable, of course they like to see men take the headlands and
furrows; but their hearts are not broken by the tracks of horses across
their wheat-fields. I doubt, indeed, whether wheat is ever much injured
by such usage. But let the thoughtful rider avoid the new-sown barley;
and, above all