and should be abhorred; but it behooves those who thus take upon
themselves the duties of censors to be sure that the practices
abhorred are in truth real pomps and actual vanities, not pomps
and vanities of the imagination. Now as to hunting, I maintain
that it is of itself the most innocent amusement going, and that
it has none of that Cider-Cellar flavour with which the old
ladies think that it is so savoury. Hunting is done by a crowd;
but men who meet together to do wicked things meet in small
parties. Men cannot gamble in the hunting-field, and drinking
there is more difficult than in almost any other scene of life.
Anonyma, as we were told the other day, may show herself; but if
so, she rides alone. The young man must be a brazen sinner, too
far gone for hunting to hurt him, who will ride with Anonyma in
the field. I know no vice which hunting either produces or
renders probable, except the vice of extravagance; and to that,
if a man be that way given, every pursuit in life will equally
lead him A seat for a Metropolitan borough, or a love of
ortolans, or a taste even for new boots will ruin a man who puts
himself in the way of ruin. The same may be said of hunting, the
same and no more.

But not the less is the general feeling very strong against the
hunting parson; and not the less will it remain so in spite of
anything that I may say. Under these circumstances our friend the
hunting parson usually rides as though he were more or less under
a cloud. The cloud is not to be seen in a melancholy brow or a
shamed demeanour; for the hunting parson will have lived down
those feelings, and is generally too forcible a man to allow
himself to be subjected to such annoyances; nor is the cloud to
be found in any gentle tardiness of his motions, or an attempt at