THE FARMER 165 



enlargement of Hyde Park, over which a person is at liberty to 

 go anyway he can get. True, Chub never attempts the wall or 

 the rails of Kensington Gardens, but that is only because he 

 sees they are too big ; so it may be said he never rides at the 

 Grand Junction or Paddington Canal, but whatever Chub sees 

 at all "upon the cards" he looks upon as fair and proper 

 game — nay, as something that he ought to have a shy at. 

 Nothing short of the fear of a broken neck can turn him to the 

 right or the left. 



So with Paul Poplin — Paul has not the slightest idea of 

 going out of his way for anything except a toll-bar, which he 

 shirks, to avoid paying ; and he thinks a red coat would justify 

 his riding into a lady's drawing-room if he liked. Gardens he 

 looks upon merely as small enclosures — fields on a small scale — 

 " retail " ones, as he calls them. Paul has heard of a " bull in 

 a china shop," and it is just to a china shop that Paul's ideas of 

 a bull's capabilities of mischief are limited. He can fancy the 

 consternation the animal would create among the jugs and 

 basins, but as to thinking it could make the slightest difference 

 to a Farmer whether the animal was in his own close or a 

 neighbour's, Paul thinks if he got into the neighbour's it would 

 be so much the better for the owner, as he would get fed 

 for nothing. 



It is only the real sportsman, or person who takes part in the 

 management of a country, that can be fully sensible of the obli- 

 gations foxhunters are under to Farmers. In the first place, we 

 are indebted to them for the existence of the animal we 

 hunt ; and their sufferance, nay, protection of it, is the more 

 disinterested and meritorious, inasmuch as foxes cannot by any 

 possibility do Farmers any good, but, on the contrary, are 

 almost certain to occasion them loss and inconvenience. They, 

 in fact, harbour animals for their own inconvenience. This they 

 do, too, in spite of domestic grievances and expostulations, for 

 foxes occasionally make sad /oraj/es among the poultry, and it 



