Yet it is the same old country, and with the
new ways and science, and learning, and civilisation, it is as with the
machinery, they are all sunk and lost in the firm old lines. It is all
changed and just the same. What a clamour there used to be about the
damage done by the hares and rabbits to the crops! By-and-by Parliament
said, 'Shoot the hares and rabbits.' To work they went and demolished
them, and now, lo! there is a feeling getting about that we don't want to
be rid of all the hares and rabbits. Hares are almost formed on purpose
to be good sport, and make a jolly good dish, a pleasant addition to the
ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead level of
civilisation reduces us. Coursing is capital, the harriers first-rate.
Now every man who walks about the fields is more or less at heart a
sportsman, and the farmer having got the right of the gun he is not
unlikely to become to some extent a game preserver. When they could not
get it they wanted to destroy it, now they have got it they want to keep
it. The old feeling coming up again--the land reasserting itself, Spain
you see--down with feudalism, but let us have the game. Look down the
long list of hounds kept in England, not one of which could get a run
were it not for the good-will of the farmers, and indeed of the
labourers. Hunting is a mimicry of the mediaeval chase, and this is the
nineteenth century of the socialist, yet every man of the fields loves to
hear the horn and the burst of the hounds.
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