tion. He understood hunting, and,
perhaps, there was nothing else requiring acute intelligence that he
did understand. And he understood hunting, not only as a huntsman
understands it,--in that branch of the science which refers simply to
the judicious pursuit of the fox, being probably inferior to his own
huntsman in that respect,--but he knew exactly what men should do,
and what they should not. In regard to all those various interests
with which he was brought in contact, he knew when to hold fast to
his own claims, and when to make no claims at all. He was afraid of
no one, but he was possessed of a sense of justice which induced him
to acknowledge the rights of those around him. When he found that the
earths were not stopped in Trumpeton Wood,--from which he judged that
the keeper would complain that the hounds would not or could not kill
any of the cubs found there,--he wrote in very round terms to the
Duke who owned it. If His Grace did not want to have the wood drawn,
let him say so. If he did, let him have the earths stopped. But when
that great question came up as to the Gartlow coverts--when that
uncommonly disagreeable gentleman, Mr. Smith, of Gartlow, gave notice
that the hounds should not be admitted into his place at all,--Lord
Chiltern soon put the whole matter straight by taking part with the
disagreeable gentleman. The disagreeable gentleman had been ill
used. Men had ridden among his young laurels. If gentlemen who did
hunt,--so said Lord Chiltern to his own supporters,--did not know
how to conduct themselves in a matter of hunting, how was it to be
expected that a gentleman who did not hunt should do so? On this
occasion Lord Chiltern rated his own hunt so roundly that Mr. Smith
and he were quite in a bond together, and the Gartlow coverts were
re-opened. Now all the world knows that the Gartlow coverts, though
small, are material as being in the very centre of the Brake country.

It is essential that a Master of Hounds should be somewhat feared by
the men who ride with him. There should be much awe mixed with the
love felt for him. He should be a man with whom other men will not
care to argue; an irrational, cut and thrust, unscrupulous, but yet
distinctly honest man; one who can be tyrannical, but will tyrannise
only over the evil spirits; a man capable of intense cruelty to those
alongside of him, but who will know whether his victim does in truth
deserve scalping before he draws his knife. He sho