love the asceticisms of a religious life,
are only men; and it has a strong tendency to keep out of the Church
that very class, the younger sons of country gentlemen, whom all
Churchmen should wish to see enter it. Young men who think of the matter
when the time for taking orders is coming near, do not feel themselves
qualified to rival St. Paul in their lives; and they who have not
thought of it find themselves to be cruelly used when they are expected
to make the attempt.

But of all the amusements which a layman may follow and a clergyman may
not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst. There is a savour of
wickedness about it in the eyes of the old ladies which almost takes it
out of their list of innocent amusements even for laymen. By the term
old ladies it will be understood, perhaps, that I do not allude simply
to matrons and spinsters who may be over the age of sixty, but to that
most respectable portion of the world which has taught itself to abhor
the pomps and vanities. Pomps and vanities are undoubtedly bad, and
should be abhorred; but it behooves those who thus take upon themselves
the duties of censors to be sure that the practices abhorred are in
truth real pomps and actual vanities, not pomps and vanities of the
imagination. Now as to hunting, I maintain that it is of itself the
most innocent amusement going, and that it has none of that Cider-Cellar
flavour with which the old ladies think that it is so savoury. Hunting
is done by a crowd; but men who meet together to do wicked things meet
in small parties. Men cannot gamble in the hunting-field, and drinking
there is more difficult than in almost any other scene of life. Anonyma,
as we were told the other day, may show herself; but if so, she rides
alone. The young man must be a brazen sinner, too far gone for hunting
to hurt him, who will ride with Anonyma in the field. I know no vice
which hunting either produces or renders probable, except the vice of
extravagance; and to that, if a man be that way given, every pursuit in
life will equally lead him A seat for a Metropolitan borough, or a love
of ortolans, or a taste even for new boots will ruin a man who puts
himself in the way of ruin. The same may be said of hunting, the same
and no more.

But not the less is the general feeling very strong against the hunting
parson; and not the less will it remain so in spite of anything that I
may say. Under these circumstances our friend the hunting pars