The old ladies know that
the young men go to these wicked places, and hope that no great
harm is done; but it would be dreadful to think that clergymen
should so degrade themselves. Now I wish I could make the old
ladies understand that hunting is not wicked.
But although that expressed plea as to the want of time really
amounts to nothing, and although the unexpressed feeling of old
ladies as to the wickedness of hunting does not in truth amount
to much, I will not say that there is no other impediment in the
way of a hunting parson. Indeed, there have come up of late years
so many impediments in the way of any amusement on the part of
clergymen, that we must almost presume them to be divested at
their consecration of all human attributes except hunger and
thirst. In my younger days, and I am not as yet very old, an
elderly clergyman might play his rubber of whist whilst his
younger reverend brother was dancing a quadrille; and they might
do this without any risk of a rebuke from a bishop, or any
probability that their neighbours would look askance at them.
Such recreations are now unclerical in the highest degree, or if
not in the highest, they are only one degree less so than
hunting. The theatre was especially a respectable clerical
resource, and we may still occasionally see heads of colleges in
the stalls, or perhaps a dean, or some rector, unambitious of
further promotion.
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