A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 203 



paws, after the morning's scrimmaging and endlessly 

 clever and zealous work. There are a few indeter- 

 minate mongrels among them, but the chief part are 

 a distinct and very fine race, big, rough-haired, pepper- 

 and-salt coloured animals with a white foot or two 

 and a tangle of hair over their honest eyes. Round 

 the pens lounge the odd-job men, who live their 

 lives at such meetings as this nomads hardly less 

 animal-looking than the beasts they follow, wild old 

 fellows with long grey locks ; gigantic, shambling 

 hulks ; blear-eyed toothless dwarfs figures of a 

 Rembrandt etching. Than the breeders and dealers 

 who lean over the wattles nothing less picturesque 

 could be found on the Green. There is one old man 

 in gills and a blue-spotted neckerchief, wearing a low- 

 crowned silk hat the old John Bull attire of the fat 

 years gone by ; but he only serves to set off the ex- 

 treme ugliness of the current bucolic style. Most of 

 the men here are big and stout ; they are mainly a 

 strident, aggressive people, heavy-handed and hard- 

 faced; their countenances, too commonly, are gross 

 and vacant, too often shaded by long use of what we 

 call " tipping it up." There are a few younger men 

 in the crowd in smart riding-breeches, fancy waist- 

 coats, and knowing bowlers ; but the majority are 

 monotonous in tailcoats of greyish hue and ample 



