To Mountain Tarn 



every one can afford a horse. But most people 

 have a pair of legs. The hunting of the moun- 

 tain fox would be in the same healthy class, were 

 it adopted into sport. 



The peasant may turn aside from the furrow, 

 leaving the patient horses to drowse away in the 

 idle plough ; the urchin peep over the boulder 

 and forget to go to school. The angler will cast 

 down his rod to enter into the more exciting play. 

 Eager-faced girls will rush hatless down the slope 

 from the drowsy life of the farm. The stream- 

 sides are our eternal right of way ; a human path 

 up which all may hurry. 



A time of wakening enthusiasm has been 

 chosen to run full tilt against sport. The 

 croakers are of the well-known type, who peri- 

 odically favour us with a Jeremiad. In one of 

 his acute analyses, Matthew Arnold grouped a 

 certain class as barbarians, because of their love 

 of outdoor life and field sport. This is really 

 the fundamental type, although socially it is at 

 the top. Scratch a Philistine, and you have a 

 barbarian. Only you have to scratch some very 

 deep, because of the thickness of the moral 

 epidermis. We were all sportsmen once. And 

 may be again, provided it is sport and not make- 

 believe. It is well we should be ; better far than 

 to be altogether Philistine, all epidermis. 



Think of the early start, the fresh morning, the 

 water churning white round the boulders, barred 



199 



