interpose some humanitarian averse equally to fishing and to hunting.
Then his lordship would arise indignantly and would ask his opponent,
whether what he called amusement was not as beneficial, as essential,
as necessary to the world as even such material good things as bread
and meat. Was poetry less valuable than the multiplication table?
Man could exist no doubt without fox-hunting. So he could without
butter, without wine, or other so-called necessaries;--without ermine
tippets, for instance, the original God-invested wearer of which had
been doomed to lingering starvation and death when trapped amidst the
snow, in order that one lady might be made fine by the agonies of a
dozen little furry sufferers. It was all a case of "tanti," he said,
and he said that the fox who had saved himself half-a-dozen times
and then died nobly on behalf of those who had been instrumental in
preserving an existence for him, ought not to complain of the lot
which Fate had provided for him among the animals of the earth. It
was said, however, in reference to this comparison between fishing
and fox-hunting, that Lord Hampstead was altogether deficient in that
skill and patience which is necessary for the landing of a salmon.

But men, though they laughed at him, still they liked him. He was
good-humoured and kindly-hearted. He was liberal in more than his
politics. He had, too, a knack of laughing at himself, and his own
peculiarities, which went far to redeem them. That a young Earl, an
embryo Marquis, the heir of such a house as that of Trafford, should
preach a political doctrine which those who heard ignorantly called
Communistic, was very dreadful; but the horror of it was mitigated
when he declared that no doubt as he got old he should turn Tory
like any other Radical. In this there seemed to be a covert allusion
to his father. And then they could perceive that his "Communistic"
principles did not prevent him from having a good eye to the value of
land. He knew what he was about, as an owner of property should do,
and certainly rode to hounds as well as any one of the boys of the
period.

When the idea first presented itself to him that his sister was on
the way to fall in love with George Roden, it has to be acknowledged
that he was displeased. It had not occurred to him that this peculiar
breach would be made on the protected sanctity of his own family.
When Roden had spoken to him of this sanctity as one of the "social
idolat