Grease to the wheels, plentiful grease to the wheels, is needed
in all machinery; but I know of no machinery in which everrunning
grease is so necessary as in the machinery of hunting.

Of such masters as I am now describing there are two sorts, of
which, however, the one is going rapidly and, I think, happily
out of fashion. There is the master of hounds who takes a
subscription, and the master who takes none. Of the latter class
of sportsman, of the imperial head of a country who looks upon
the coverts of all his neighbours as being almost his own
property, there are, I believe, but few left. Nor is such
imperialism fitted for the present age. In the days of old of
which we read so often, the days of Squire Western, when fox-
hunting was still young among us, this was the fashion in which
all hunts were maintained. Any country gentleman who liked the
sport kept a small pack of hounds, and rode over his own lands or
the lands of such of his neighbours as had no similar
establishments of their own. We never hear of Squire Western that
he hunted the county, or that he went far afield to his meets.
His tenants joined him, and by degrees men came to his hunt from
greater distances around him. As the necessity for space
increased, increasing from increase of hunting ambition, the
richer and more ambitious squires began to undertake the
management of wider areas, and so our hunting districts were
formed. But with such extension of area there came, of course,
necessity of extended expenditure, and so the fashion of
subscription lists arose. There have remained some few great
Nimrods who have chosen to be magnanimous and to pay for
everything, despising the contributions of their followers. Such
a one was the late Earl Fitzhardinge, and after such manner in,