HUNTING IN THE MIDLANDS. 91 



week's holiday, and who, being fond of riding, had determined to 

 take it in this way. In an average hunting field of the present day 

 you will discover men of all kinds of professions and occupations 

 — attorneys, auctioneers, butchers, bakers, innkeepers, artists, 

 sailors, authors. There is no town in England which has not 

 more than one pack of hounds in its immediate vicinity ; and 

 you will find that the riders who make up the regular field are 

 inhabitants of the town — men who are at work four or five days 

 in the week at their desk or counter, and who hunt the remain- 

 ing one or two. There is no greater instrument of social har- 

 mony than that of the modern hunting field ; and, it may be 

 added, there is no institution which affords a healthier oppor- 

 tunity for the ebullition of what may be called the democratic 

 instincts of human nature. The hunting field is the paradise of 

 equality, and the only title to recognition is achievement. 

 ' Rank,' says a modern authority on the sport, ' has no privilege, 

 and wealth can afford no protection.' Out of the hunting field 

 there may be a wide gulf that separates peasant from peer, 

 tenant from landlord. But there is no earthly power which can 

 compel the tenant to give way to the landlord, or the peasant to 

 the peer, when the scent is good and the hounds are in full cry. 

 As we get to ■ the bottom of the long and irregularly-paved 

 street which constitutes the main thoroughfare — indeed, I might 

 add, the entire town of Chipping Ongar— we fall in with other 

 equestrians bound for Branksome Bushes — the meet fixed for 

 that day — distant not more than two miles from Chipping Ongar 

 itself There was the chief medical man of the place, mounted 

 on a very clever horse, the head of the Chipping Ongar bank, 

 and some half-dozen strangers. As we drew near to 'the 

 Bushes ' we saw that there had already congregated a very con- 

 siderable crowd. There were young ladies, some who had come 

 just to see the throw off, and others with an expression in their 

 faces, and a cut about their habits, which looked like business, 

 and which plainly indicated that they intended, if possible, to be 

 in at the death. There were two or three clergyman who had 

 come from adjoining parishes, and one or two country squires. 

 There were some three or four Oxford undergraduates — Chip- 

 ping Ongar is within a very convenient distance of the city of 

 academic towers — who were ' staying up ' at their respective 

 colleges for the purpose of reading during a portion of the vaca- 

 tion, and who found it necessary to vary the monotony of intense 

 intellectual application by an occasional gallop with the Chip- 



