272 THE BEST OF THE FUN 



feast of scenery and of spring. Why should the land thus 

 b3 made hideous ? why should the travelling public be 

 tortured by these obtrusive horrors ? why should they 

 be robbed thus of their birthright, the glorious beauty 

 of their native land ? and why, again, should that birth- 

 right be handed over as a monopoly to vulgar vendors of 

 cosmetics or poisonous purgatives ? Is there no power to 

 help us, no legislator willing to come forward on our 

 behalf ? or are we cheerfully to accept the infliction as 

 one of the blessings of Free Trade ? 



The Forest was at length reached, a good horse was 

 awaiting me, and now I was jogging across Brockenhurst 

 Common — under a sun more oppressive, along a road 

 more dust-laden, than when across this very ground I saw 

 a fallow-buck so handsomely galloped down one mid- 

 August. 



The roadside meet by the gate of New Park was 

 indeed a summer scene. Hounds were lying down 

 beneath a holly-bush ; a group of thirty or forty riders 

 were clustered under the scanty shade of the old oaks, 

 that as yet were guiltless of foliage ; while on the other 

 side of the road were drawn up a number of carriages 

 whose occupants for the most part were bent upon pic- 

 nicking rather than deer-hunting. Nearly a hundred 

 horsemen eventually took part in what they looked upon 

 as a valedictory, and, in sincerity, a somewhat sad occa- 

 sion — the final day of a long and honoured regime. A 

 few of those present were, besides the Misses Lovell, 

 Lady Cantelupe, Miss Glyn, Captain and Miss Standish, 

 Misses Dobie, Miss Tattnall, Lord Howth, General Sey- 

 mour, Sir A. Grant, Colonel Powell, Colonel Crofton, Mr. 

 G. Lascelles, Major Talbot, Mr. Blake, Captain Turpin, 

 Messrs. Wingrove Penton, Wilder, AUenby, and Miles Marsh. 



The Forest was not yet looking its best. Another 

 fortnight, with more seasonable weather, might, as I have 

 said, still have seen hounds at work, and then the woods 

 would have been found in their best and gayest colouring 

 — the trees in leaf, the thorn-bushes in flower, and the 

 ground in full herbage. Now the earth was parched, the 

 grassy rides within the fir-enclosures were rugged and 



