At length when every dodge had been tried

At length when every dodge had been tried

At length when every dodge had been tried

At length when every dodge had been tried, Master Reynard made a bolt in despair. We raced him down a line of fields of very pretty fencing to a small lake, where wild ducks squatted up, and there ran into him, after a fair although not a very fast day’s sport: a more honest hunting, yet courageous dashing pack we never rode to. The scarcity of villages, the general sparseness of the population, the few roads, and those almost all turf-bordered, and on a level with the fields, the great size of the enclosures, the prevalence of light arable land, the nuisance of flocks of sheep, and yet a good scenting country, are the special features of the Wolds. When you leave them and descend, there is a country of water, drains, and deep ditches, that require a real water-jumper. Two points specially strike a stranger the complete hereditary air of the pack, and the attendants, so different from the piebald, new-varnished appearance of fashionable subscription packs. Smith, the huntsman, is fourth in descent of a line of Brocklesby huntsmen; Robinson, the head groom, had just completed his half century of service at Brocklesby; and Barnetby, who rode Lord Yarborough’s second horse, was many years in the same capacity with the first Earl. But, after all, the Brocklesby tenants the Nainbys, the Brookes, the Skipwiths, and other Woldsmen, names whom to mention would take up too much room, as the Eton Grammar says tenants who, from generation to generation, have lived, and flourished, and hunted under the Pelham family a spirited, intelligent, hospitable race of men these alone are worth travelling from Land’s End to see, to hear, to dine with; to learn from their sayings and doings what a wise, liberal, resident landlord a lover of field sports, a promoter of improved agriculture can do in the course of generations toward breeding a first-class tenantry, and feeding thousands of townsfolk from acres that a hundred years ago only fed rabbits. We should recommend those M.P.’s who think fox-hunting folly, to leave their books and debates for a day’s hunting on the Wolds. We think it will be hard to obtain such happy results from the mere pen-and-ink regulations of chamber legislators and haters of field sports. Three generations of the Pelhams turned thousands of acres of waste in heaths and Wolds into rich farm-land; the fourth did his part by giving the same district railways and seaport communication. When we find learned mole-eyed pedants sneering at fox-hunters, we may call the Brocklesby kennels and the Pelham Pillar as witnesses on the side of the common sense of English field sports. It was hunting that settled the Pelhams in a remote country and led them to colonise a waste.