arks are the
glory of our English landscape, and whose names are to be found in the
pages of our county records; or if not that, he is one who, with a view
to hunting, has brought his family and fortune into a new district, and
has found a ready place as a country gentleman among new neighbours. It
has been said that no one should become a member of Parliament unless
he be a man of fortune. I hold such a rule to be much more true with
reference to a master of hounds. For his own sake this should be so, and
much more so for the sake of those over whom he has to preside. It is
a position in which no man can be popular without wealth, and it is a
position which no man should seek to fill unless he be prepared to spend
his money for the gratification of others. It has been said of masters
of hounds that they must always have their hands in their pockets, and
must always have a guinea to find there; and nothing can be truer than
this if successful hunting is to be expected. Men have hunted countries,
doubtless, on economical principles, and the sport has been carried on
from year to year; but under such circumstances it is ever dwindling and
becoming frightfully less. The foxes disappear, and when found almost
instantly sink below ground. Distant coverts, which are ever the best
because less frequently drawn, are deserted, for distance of course adds
greatly to expense. The farmers round the centre of the county become
sullen, and those beyond are indifferent; and so, from bad to worse,
the famine goes on till the hunt has perished of atrophy. Grease to the
wheels, plentiful grease to the wheels, is needed in all machinery; but
I know of no machinery in which everrunning grease is so necessary as in
the machinery of hunting.

Of such masters as I am now describing there are two sorts, of which,
however, the one is going rapidly and, I think, happily out of fashion.
There is the master of hounds who takes a subscription, and the master
who takes none. Of the latter class of sportsman, of the imperial head
of a country who looks upon the coverts of all his neighbours as being
almost his own property, there are, I believe, but few left. Nor is such
imperialism fitted for the present age. In the days of old of which we
read so often, the days of Squire Western, when fox-hunting was still
young among us, this was the fashion in which all hunts were maintained.
Any country gentleman who liked the sport kept a small pack of hounds,