38 SPORT. 



with nations. They, too, when they grow old should 

 preserve, or at least, not too remorselessly extinguish, 

 their follies. I fear lest in grasping at the shadow of 

 national perfection we only attain the reality of a 

 saturnalia of prigs — an apotheosis of claptrap. Legis- 

 lation has performed such queer antics lately that the 

 angels must be beginning to weep. And ugly visions 

 sometimes haunt me of a time coming, which shall be 

 a good time to no man, at least to no Englishman, 

 when an impossible standard of pseudo-philanthropy 

 and humanitarian morality shall be attempted ; when 

 -the butcher shall lie down with the lamb, the alderman 

 with the turtle,^ and the oyster shall not be eaten 

 without anaesthetics ; when nature itself shall be under 

 the eye of the police, and detectives watch the stoat's 

 pursuit of the rabbit and keep guard over spiders' 

 webs ; when all property (and not in land alone, my 

 advanced friend !) save that of Hardware magnates, 

 who have made a monopoly and called it peace, 

 shall be confiscated as an "unearned increment" to 

 the State ; when we have by legislative enactment 



