3 [ SKETCHES IX THE HUNTING FIELD. 



occupy a very prominent place, if such sketches are to 

 be fairly comprehensive. 



My opinion of Tom is by no means a universal 

 one, and the very progressive Radical member, Mr. 

 Marmaduke Jenks, who sits for the market-town where 

 you may meet Tom any Friday morning, regards him 

 as an ignorant boor, dissipated and dangerous; while 

 Tom, on his side, stigmatises his friend as a "rum 'un." 



Tom's creed is, in fact, very simple. 



He is only anxious to do the best by the land he holds, 

 to train up his son to follow in his grandfather's foot- 

 steps, to make his daughters fit wives for the young 

 farmers, his son's contemporaries, to keep his depend- 

 ants honest and comfortable, and, in short — the idea 

 seems absurd in this grasping, discontented age — to do 

 his duty in that station of life to which it has pleased 

 God to call him. 



Tom's ignorance revealed itself conspicuously when 

 he was invited to become a member of a Two Hundred 

 who were to have the privilege of selecting ]\Ir. Jenks as 

 a fit and proper person to represent the agricultural 

 interest in the House of Commons, an honour which 

 Tom refused in terms unmistakeably decisive. 



To his besotted mind, his landlord is his natural 

 representative, and he looks on the sudden arrival of a 

 stranger who does not own an acre in the county, and 

 whose only claim to consideration is that he has edited 

 a manual of political economy, as an impudent intrusion. 

 He has heard Mr. Jenks hold forth on the tyranny of the 



