The South Durham. 219 



West Yorkshire. He manages almost to disregard 

 them, and in North Durham their presence, never 

 actively inimical, is taken into a kind of semi-alliance. 

 It may be noticed, by those who care to throw a 

 glance over these sketches of Hunting Countries, that 

 m every single one some prominent drawback is 

 brought forward ; that everywhere there is some 

 obnoxious agent knocking* the gilt off the gingerbread, 

 the bloom off the flower. Here it is an habitual cold 

 scent, there it is the impracticability of riding with 

 hounds on a hot one. In another instance, coverts are 

 too big and frequent ; in the next they are too small 

 and sparse. In one country it is too hilly, in another 

 it is too flat and sticky. Here, nothing to jump ; 

 there, too much or too stiff; here there is all plough; 

 there all grass — and a crowd that drives two men out 

 of three right about, to a sense of content with their 

 native difficulties. Eleusis does not exist. But it is 

 fun and hearths content wherever hounds run. So we 

 have all said before ; and so shall we hold while we 

 can grip the pigskin and the pen. 



But it is with South Durham that we have now to 

 do — a fair proportion of which is still open enough to 

 allow of the scream of the whip being heard above the 

 whistle of the railway engine, the clang of the colliery, 

 or the din of iron works. The margin of the South 

 Durham is divided from the North Durham by a line 

 from Bishop Auckland — by Spennimore to Thornley 

 and the sea. But Sedgefield is the marking-point of 

 the country. Gro south and go east — and you may 

 hunt in comfort if not in absolute luxury. It was 

 never more than this, even in the days of Ealph 



