upwards. But with how many a wretched companion of Briggs' are we
not familiar? men as to whom any girl of eighteen would swear
from the form of his visage and the carriage of his legs as he
sits on his horse that he was seeking honour where honour was not
to be found, and looking for pleasure in places where no pleasure
lay for him.

But the man who hunts and doesn't like it, has his moments of
gratification, and finds a source of pride in his penance. In the
summer, hunting does much for him. He does not usually take much
personal care of his horses, as he is probably a town man and his
horses are summered by a keeper of hunting stables; but he talks
of them. He talks of them freely, and the keeper of the hunting
stables is occasionally forced to write to him. And he can run
down to look at his nags, and spend a few hours eating bad mutton
chops, walking about the yards and paddocks, and, bleeding
halfcrowns through the nose. In all this there is a delight which
offers some compensation for his winter misery to our friend who
hunts and doesn't like it.

He finds it pleasant to talk of his horses especially to young
women, with whom, perhaps, the ascertained fact of his winter
employment does give him some credit. It is still something to be
a hunting man even yet, though the multiplicity of railways and
the existing plethora of money has so increased the number of
sportsmen, that to keep a nag or two near some well-known
station, is nearly as common as to die. But the delight of these
martyrs is at the highest in the presence of their tailors; or,
higher still, perhaps, in that of their bootmakers. The hunting
man does receive some honour from him who makes his breeches;