36 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



was to take a new ply and tone from a very different type of 

 man. 



Turnips and seeds and sheep-shearings began to occupy 

 the attention of great men. Towards the end of the century 

 Burke's letters, as Mr. Birrell tells us, thrill with passion on 

 these topics. Fox was never so happy as when in his fustian 

 coat and white beaver hat he leaned over the palings at 

 St. Ann's and talked to passers-by about the crops. Miss 

 Maria Holroyd, whose letters so brightly reflect the ways 

 of the political society in which she lived, writes of the 

 farming rides she is looking forward to with her father, 

 and Lord Sheffield himself, though detained in London by 

 his official duties, writes fidgety letters about drilling turnips 

 and taking advantage of the cooler weather and damp roads 

 to send the w^aggon oxen to Lewes. Lord Althorp came 

 later. But not the least of Lord Althorp's distinguished 

 services to his generation were those he rendered to the 

 management of grass lands and the breeding of sheep. 

 High farming began to occupy the fruitful leisure of poli- 

 ticians in those days. In these days it is golf, or theology, 

 or the unemployed. 



I imagine that in memoirs written say since 1884 the 

 term ' country party ' would be meaningless. ' Comngsby ' 

 and ' Sybil ' could not have been written without the country 

 party, but Mrs. Humphry Ward finds no place for them in her 

 admirable ' Sir George Tressady.' As far as pohtical influ- 

 ence in the old sense of the term goes, the country gentlemen 

 might just as well colonise the Gordon Hotels as live amongst 

 their own people. Of late years neither party in the State 

 has had to lull the suspicions or coax the prejudices of the 

 ' Civis agricola ' Montalembert admired so much. Except, 

 perhaps, in Ireland, where, as Lord John Eussell said, the 

 land is still the life, the heart of politics has shifted from 

 the country house to the streets. 



