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WINTER IN THE SHIRES 



the ice than in sloppy pastures and holding fallows. So 

 we shall not follow the hounds as they draw from cover 

 to cover ; and as for the tale of the run, has it not been 

 often written by men who were themselves unapproach- 

 ably in the foremost flight, but who are gone beneath 

 the turf they used to gallop over ? The shades of the 

 departed warn us to be silent, from Nimrod of the 

 Quarterly, mighty among literary hunters, to the 

 lamented Colonel Whyte-Melville, lost to us by an 

 accident in the hunting-field. The hunting-field in the 

 south, as the curling-pond in the north, brings many 

 classes together in a kindly communion of tastes and 

 sympathies ; and long may it continue to do so. The 

 greater and the more unreserved the kindly intercourse 

 of the sort, the less is it likely that revolutionary 

 legislation will sow dissensions among those who were 

 born to be friends will banish all but utilitarians from 

 rural England, and subvert the time-honoured land- 

 marks that our fathers religiously preserved. 



UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. 



