268 HUNTING. 



is brave and simple, has stood by Napier's side in many an Indian 

 fight ; that one won his Victoria at Delhi, and was cut up at 

 Lucknow with more than twenty wounds ; that one has but what 

 matter to you what each man is ? Enough that each can tell one 

 a good story, welcome one cheerfully, and give one out here, in 

 the wild forest, the wholesome feeling of being at home among 

 friends. 



In that last sentence lies, perhaps, the root of the matter, 

 the wholesome feeling of being at home among friends : the sense 

 of companionship, the feeling that you are not selfishly enjoying 

 a solitary pleasure, but are, for the time at least, united by a 

 common bond with all sorts and conditions of your fellow-men, 

 among whom you live, with all of whom you are more or less 

 acquainted, and in whose pursuits and pleasures, habits and 

 manners, you are more or less concerned or interested. Trojan 

 and Tyrian, Whig and Tory, here is a common ground on which 

 all can meet and disport themselves. Surely this is no light 

 pleasure in these quarrelsome days. And there are other 

 pleasures, too, less sentimental, if you like, and perhaps to be 

 more generally appreciated. There is the pleasure, for instance, 

 of knowing the country well, knowing it in all its varying moods 



of 



Fresh spring and summer and winter hoar ; 



in tasting what Whyte-Melville calls the romance of hunting 



The remote scenes we should perhaps never visit for their own 

 sake, the broken sunlight glinting through copse and gleaming on 

 fern, the woodland sights, the woodland sounds, the balmy odours 

 of Nature, and all the treats she provides for her votaries, tasted and 

 enjoyed, with every faculty roused, every sense sharpened, in the 

 excitement of our pursuit. 



And this, everyone will agree, is a great profit as well as 

 pleasure. * When my young hounds are taken out to air,' says 

 Beckford, ' my huntsman takes them into that country in which 

 they are designed to hunt. It is attended with this advantage : 

 they acquire a knowledge of the country, and when left behind 



