FOX-IIUNTING— THE FOX. 47 



have headed this chapter, will very fairly show how he was 

 appreciated by the mob. In those days the vox i^opuli was 

 decidedly against him, and it has often been a source of won- 

 derment to me how vulpes vulgaris escaped the extirmination 

 which overtook his cousin-german the wolf. The old Norman 

 knew him not as a friend, and the protecting hand which was 

 spread as a shield of defence around hart and hind, buck, doe, 

 and roe, besides confining the Saxon to his own acorn-fed pork, 

 let him long never so much for a dish of brawn from the real 

 wild boar, was withheld from him. True, he did not go in for 

 such large game as the wolf, and hence his raids on herd and 

 fold, supposing he made them, were of a less extensive order ; 

 but it is said, I believe truly, that men bear great ills with more 

 equanimity than small ones, and his occasional thefts of poultry 

 must have been quite as irritating in their way. Think for one 

 moment of a Saxon farmer, ground down by his landlord, as he 

 undoubtedly was, unless historians are great liars, badly housed 

 and none too well fed, whose utmost endeavours, whether by 

 patiently bearing all his wife had to say, by turning a deaf ear, 

 or, as was sometimes done, bringing her to a proper sense of 

 subjection to her lord and master by the use of a stout cudgel — 

 fancy an unhappy wight in this situation, waking some bitterly 

 cold winter morning — they had cold winters then, I believe — 

 to find that all his endeavours to procure a peaceable home were 

 rendered null and void by a predatory rogue of the vulpine 

 family having made free with the good dame's hen-roost, requi- 

 sitioned half her goslings, or taken a tithe of the ducks. Think 

 of this, I say, and remember, there was no landlord at the 

 castle, who cared one jot for his welfare, no poultry fund to 

 which to apply for compensation, and you will wonder with me 

 how it was that foxes ever survived in sufficient numbers to lay 

 the foundation of that sport in which England now glories. 

 No doubt the deep woods and forests which then abounded 

 were much in his favour ; strychnine was unknown, and keepers 

 had not yet come to breed pheasants by the thousand. But 



