EIDING TO HOUNDS. 75 



behind who are anxious to get on, cautiously 

 steer their mounts over the ditch beyond. It is 

 not thus that a picked field ride in Leicester- 

 shire, but in what are called " the provinces" the 

 sketch given is a fair one. 



The question why, this being so, hunting is 

 so widely popular, has occupied the pens of many 

 writers. Mr. Anthony Trollope wrote an essay 

 on " The Man who Hunts and Doesn't Lilve it," 

 describing the earnest but ineffectual attempts 

 which he makes to like it when the season he 

 has professed to long for comes round to him. 

 Trollope hunted and liked it, notwithstanding 

 that his short sight often brought him to grief. 



" Now I think I've finished ! " he is reported 

 to have said once as he clambered out of a ditch 

 in Essex, and picked up his spectacles, jirepara- 

 tory to the taking of measures for the extraction 

 of his horse. 



'' Finished what ? " a friend, who had pulled 

 up to see that there were no ill efi'ects from the 

 cropper, inquired. 



"Why," TroUope replied, "it seemed to be 

 my destiny to feel the bottom of every ditch in 

 the Eoothings, and I've been into so many that 

 this must be the last." 



He pictures, however, the man who does not 

 like it. The subject of his essay has liked it 



