106 Wild Life in a Southern County 



couple of long ashen staves, and the ceremony performed 

 by him consisted in dancing these two sticks together in 

 a fantastic manner to some old rhyme or story. 



The parlour is always full of flowers — the mantelpiece 

 and grate in spring quite hidden by fresh green boughs of 

 horse-chestnut in bloom, or with lilac, blue-bells, or wild 

 hyacinths ; in summer nodding grasses from the meadows, 

 roses, sweet-briar ; in the autumn two or three great 

 apples, the finest of the year, put as ornaments among the 

 china, and the corners of the looking-glass decorated with 

 bunches of ripe wheat. A badger's skin lies across the back 

 of the armchair; a fox's head, the sharp white tusks showing, 

 snarls oyer the doorway ; and in glass cases are a couple 

 of stuffed kingfishers, a polecat, a white blackbird, and a 

 diver — rare here — shot in the mere hard by. 



On the walls are a couple of old hunting pictures, 

 dusky with age, but the crudity of the colours by no 

 means toned down, or their rude contrast moderated: 

 bright scarlet coats, bright white horses, harsh green grass, 

 prim dogs, stiff trees, human figures immovable in tight 

 buckskins ; running water hard as glass, the sky fixed, the 

 ground all too small for the grouping, perspective painfully 

 emphasized, so as to be itself made visible ; the surface 

 everywhere ' painty ' — in brief, most of the possible faults 

 compressed together, and proudly fathered by the artist's 

 name in full. 



One representing a meet, and the other full cry, the 

 pack crossing a small river ; the meet still and rigid, every 

 horseman in his place — not a bit jingling, or a hoof pawing, 

 or anything in motion. Now the beauty of the meet, as 

 distinct from a drilled cavalry troop, is its animation : 

 horses and riders moving here and there, gathering to- 

 gether and spreading out again, new-comers riding smartly 



