The foxes
disappear, and when found almost instantly sink below ground.
Distant coverts, which are ever the best because less frequently
drawn, are deserted, for distance of course adds greatly to
expense. The farmers round the centre of the county become
sullen, and those beyond are indifferent; and so, from bad to
worse, the famine goes on till the hunt has perished of atrophy.
Grease to the wheels, plentiful grease to the wheels, is needed
in all machinery; but I know of no machinery in which everrunning
grease is so necessary as in the machinery of hunting.
Of such masters as I am now describing there are two sorts, of
which, however, the one is going rapidly and, I think, happily
out of fashion. There is the master of hounds who takes a
subscription, and the master who takes none. Of the latter class
of sportsman, of the imperial head of a country who looks upon
the coverts of all his neighbours as being almost his own
property, there are, I believe, but few left. Nor is such
imperialism fitted for the present age. In the days of old of
which we read so often, the days of Squire Western, when fox-
hunting was still young among us, this was the fashion in which
all hunts were maintained. Any country gentleman who liked the
sport kept a small pack of hounds, and rode over his own lands or
the lands of such of his neighbours as had no similar
establishments of their own.
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