wild about deer-stealing. Unless he was a hunter, as they affected
to call themselves, no young person was allowed to be possessed of
manhood or gallantry. The Waltham blacks at length committed
such enormities, that government was forced to interfere with that
severe and sanguinary act called the Black Act,* which now
comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed
before. And, therefore, a late bishop of Winchester, when urged to
re-stock Waltham-chase,** refused, from a motive worthy of a
prelate, replying that 'it had done mischief enough already.'
(* Statute 9 Geo. I. c. 22.)
(** This chase remains unstocked to this day; the bishop was Dr.
Hoadly.)

Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet: it was but a
little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits
of their youth; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and,
when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the
quick to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be
killed; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a
turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing
a dog in the following extraordinary manner: Some fellows,
suspecting that a calf new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of
thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to surprise it; when the parent hind
rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring with all her feet
close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short
in two.

Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of
rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places: but these
being inconvenient to the huntsmen, on account of their burrows,