understand it. You cannot induce him to believe that if he held
land in England, looking to make his rent from tender young
grass-fields and patches of sprouting corn, he would be powerless
to keep out intruders, if those intruders came in the shape of a
rushing squadron of cavalry, and called themselves a hunt. To
him, in accordance with his existing ideas, rural life under such
circumstances would be impossible. A small pan of charcoal, and
an honourable death-bed, would give him relief after his first
experience of such an invasion.

Nor would the English farmer put up with the invasion, if the
English farmer were not himself a hunting man. Many farmers,
doubtless, do not hunt, and they bear it, with more or less
grace; but they are inured to it from their infancy, because it
is in accordance with the habits and pleasures of their own race.
Now and again, in every hunt, some man comes up, who is, indeed,
more frequently a small proprietor new to the glories of
ownership, than a tenant farmer, who determines to vindicate his
rights and oppose the field. He puts up a wire-fence round his
domain, thus fortifying himself, as it were, in his citadel, and
defies the world around him. It is wonderful how great is the
annoyance which one such man may give, and how thoroughly he may
destroy the comfort of the coverts in his neighbourhood. But,
strong as such an one is in his fortress, there are still the
means of fighting him. The farmers around him, if they be hunting
men, make the place too hot to hold him. To them he is a thing
accursed, a man to be spoken of with all evil language, as one
who desires to get more out of his land than Providence, that
is, than an English Providence, has intended. Their own wheat is
exposed, and it is abominable to them that the wheat of another