232 THE NOBLE SCIENCE. 



Happy is it for him who is located in the provincials, 

 if his domestic comforts are such, that he considers 

 nothing could compensate for the loss of them ; still 

 happier, if he thinks that hunting from home is every- 

 thing — that fox-hunting, all over the world, must be, 

 and is, fox-hunting all the world over — that there is no 

 country so bad that it may not be made better, by a 

 proper direction of energy towards the amelioration of 

 any defects capable of improvement. A bad country 

 may be made worse, by a bad establishment of hounds, 

 &c., or better, by a good one. If farmers, or landowners, 

 are hostile, they may be propitiated. You cannot 

 gather up all the flints, level the lanes, or alter the 

 nature of the soil, as to its scenting capabilities ; but 

 you may labour advantageously in devoting some pains 

 to the organization and well-being of the Hunting Club; 

 may be instrumental in directing the use of its funds 

 to the general benefit, and in promoting that social 

 intercourse under which it will assuredly flourish, — with- 

 out which it will as certainly decay. If aU men, pos- 

 sessing more or less influence in the county, will but 

 pull together— if each will consider the common cause 

 identified with his own — if they will remember that a 

 benefit or an injury to one part of the country, has its 

 corresponding efiect upon another — if each will contri- 

 bute his quota towards the advancement of all the 

 good, and the reconciliation of any bad feeling existing 

 in his neighbourhood, there can, in no part of England, 



