IN LITERATURE 3 



gilded grills and its bolted posterns are disagreeably 

 suggestive of antipathies of class, and the absence of 

 those kindly feelings that are insensibly fostered in the 

 course of generations by a neighbourly intercourse 

 between the landlord and his people. The foreign 

 proprietor can seldom hunt, and there is little for him 

 to shoot. The fields look all that is desirable for 

 partridges, but they are cut up in infinitesimal patches 

 among a society of jealous little owners, who would 

 open full cry on their more wealthy neighbour if he 

 followed a pack over their patrimonies. His woods 

 may be attractive to the artist, but they have none of 

 the undergrowth that shelters ground-game ; and if he 

 went in for pheasant-breeding, he would have to bring 

 up his birds by hand in wired-in aviaries like those of 

 the Jardin d'Acclimatation. 



Go where you will abroad, there are the same signs 

 of conspicuous segregation between the men of the 

 country and those of the town ; and the exceptions 

 only prove the rule. In Brittany and some other of 

 the more wild and woodland provinces of France, there 

 are still seigneurs who live in their ancestral chateaux, 

 devoting themselves to the chase of the wolf, and 

 having ofT-days among the hares, the wild fowl, and 

 the partridges. But they are a class by themselves, and 

 the wolf-hunting is supposed to be mattter of necessity, 

 so that the dignity of master of the hounds is frequently 

 an official appointment. Volunteers flock to the 

 rendezvous clad in garments of sheep-skin and armed 

 with antiquated weapons, heavily loaded with slugs and 



