as well as all eye, when
he hears a slight boast from one of his late unfortunate companions, a
first small blast of the trumpet which will become loud anon if it be
not checked, he smiles inwardly, and moralizes on the weakness of human
nature. But the man who never jumps is not usually of a benevolent
nature, and it is almost certain that he will make up a little story
against the boaster.

Such is the amusement of the man who rides and never jumps. Attached to
every hunt there will be always one or two such men. Their evidence is
generally reliable; their knowledge of the country is not to be doubted;
they seldom come to any severe trouble; and have usually made for
themselves a very wide circle of hunting acquaintances by whom they
are quietly respected. But I think that men regard them as they do the
chaplain on board a man-of-war, or as they would regard a herald on
a field of battle. When men are assembled for fighting, the man who
notoriously does not fight must feel himself to be somewhat lower than
his brethren around him, and must be so esteemed by others.

THE HUNTING PARSON.

I feel some difficulty in dealing with the character I am now about
to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn the hunting
parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his profession; and, for
myself, I am not prepared to say that the world is wrong. Had my pastors
and masters, my father and mother, together with the other outward
circumstances of my early life, made a clergyman of me, I think that I
should not have hunted, or at least, I hope that I might have abstained;
and yet, for the life of me, I cannot see the reason against it, or tell
any man why a clergyman should not ride to hounds. In discussing the
subject, and I often do discuss it, the argument against the practice
which is finally adopted, the argument which is intended to be
conclusive, simply amounts to this, that a parish clergyman who does
his duty cannot find the time. But that argument might be used with much
more truth against other men of business, against those to whose hunting
the world takes no exception. Indeed, of all men, the ordinary parish
clergyman, is, perhaps, the least liable to such censure. He lives in
the country, and can hunt cheaper and with less sacrifice of time than
other men. His professional occupation does not absorb all his hours,
and he is too often an idle man, whether he hunt or whether he do not.
Nor is it de