212 THE HUNTING FIELD 



instead of being bonded in costly quartos, and 

 voluminous encyclopaedias, irrigates the whole land 

 in cheap tracts and treatises. A man can buy just 

 what he wants and nothing more. So with news- 

 papers. The son of the man who, twenty years 

 ago, was content with his country paper, now has 

 his London daily, and Sunday one on the " dies 

 non" 



M'Adam was thought a miracle twenty or five-and- 

 twenty years ago, and gentlemen who had been 

 accustomed to plough their ways to their market 

 towns with their carriage wheels up to the axles 

 began to think they ran easier on hard surfaces. 

 Gradually roads became better, and the old fat 

 maggots of horses were thought equal to two journies 

 a week instead of one. Country houses in former days 

 were like besieged towns, where it was necessary to 

 keep a large stock of everything, and where everything 

 and everybody was taken in and welcomed. Inns were 

 then the characteristic of towns, but the improvement 

 of roads and consequent increase of communication 

 have established them in nearly all parts where a trade 

 can be driven, and with their establishment the old 

 system of taking in servants and horses has been 

 gradually going out. Some object to the discontinu- 

 ance of the custom, as contrary to the principles of 

 old English hospitality, but like all antiquated customs 

 it is as well to get rid of it where no present advantage 

 is derived, and when the circumstances that gave rise 

 to the custom have disappeared. If society is looked 

 upon as the medium of conversation and the inter- 

 change of sentiments and opinions, then it cannot be 

 said that servants or horses contribute to the purpose; 

 and though it might be a breach of hospitality to send 

 a friend's horses away to bad stabling, it would look 

 rather like " sponging " to send them to private 

 stables when there is good standing in the neigh- 

 bourhood. Of course all this must be received with 



