them.

But in whatever garb the hunting parson may ride, he almost
invariably rides well, and always enjoys the sport. If he did
not, what would tempt him to run counter, as he does, to his
bishop and the old ladies ? And though, when the hounds are first
dashing out of covert, and when the sputtering is beginning and
the eager impetuosity of the young is driving men three at a time
into the same gap, when that wild excitement of a fox just away
is at its height, and ordinary sportsmen are rushing for
places, though at these moments the hunting parson may be able
to restrain himself, and to declare by his momentary tranquillity
that he is only there to see the hounds, he will ever be found,
seeing the hounds also, when many of that eager crowd have lagged
behind, altogether out of sight of the last tail of them. He will
drop into the running, as it were out of the clouds, when the
select few have settled down steadily to their steady work; and
the select few will never look upon him as one who, after that,
is likely to fall out of their number. He goes on certainly to
the kill, and then retires a little out of the circle, as though
he had trotted in at that spot from his ordinary parochial
occupations, just to see the hounds.

For myself I own that I like the hunting parson. I generally find
him to be about the pleasantest man in the field, with the most
to say for himself, whether the talk be of hunting, of politics,
of literature, or of the country. He is never a hunting man
unalloyed, unadulterated, and unmixed, a class of man which is
perhaps of all classes the most tedious and heavy in hand. The
tallow-chandler who can talk only of candles, or the barrister