would grant,--for the moment, though he was by no means sure of the fact,--but for the moment he would grant that the fox did not enjoy the hunt. Let it be acknowledged--for the sake of the argument--that he was tortured by the hounds rather than elated by the triumphant success of his own manoeuvres. Lord Hampstead "ventured to say,"--this he would put forward in the rationalistic tone with which he was wont to prove the absurdity of hereditary honours,--"that in the infliction of all pain the question as to cruelty or no cruelty was one of relative value." Was it "tanti?" Who can doubt that for a certain maximum of good a certain minimum of suffering may be inflicted without slur to humanity? In hunting, one fox was made to finish his triumphant career, perhaps prematurely, for the advantage of two hundred sportsmen. "Ah, but only for their amusement!" would interpose some humanitarian averse equally to fishing and to hunting. Then his lordship would arise indignantly and would ask his opponent, whether what he called amusement was not as beneficial, as essential, as necessary to the world as even such material good things as bread and meat. Was poetry less valuable than the multiplication table? Man could exist no doubt without fox-hunting. So he could without butter, without wine, or other so-called necessaries;--without ermine tippets, for instance, the original God-invested wearer of which had been doomed to lingering starvation and death when trapped amidst the snow, in order that one lady might be made fine by the agonies of a dozen little furry sufferers. It was all a case of "tanti," he said, and he said that the fox who had saved himself half-a-dozen times and then died nobly on behalf of those who had been instrumental in preserving an existence for him, ought not to complain of the lot which Fate had provided for him among the animals of the earth. It was said, however, in reference to this comparison between fishing and fox-hunting, that Lord Hampstead was altogether deficient in that skill and patience which is necessary for the landing of a salmon. But men, though they laughed at him, still they liked him. He was good-humoured and kindly-hearted. He was liberal in more than his politics. He had, too, a knack of laughing at himself, and his own peculiarities, which went far to redeem them. That a young Earl, an embryo Marquis, the heir of such a house as that of Trafford, should preach a political doctrine which those who heard ignorantly called Communistic, was very dreadful; but the horror of it was mitigated when he declared that no doubt as he got old he should turn Tory like any other Radical. In this there seemed to be a covert allusion to his father. And then they could perceive that his "Communistic" principles did not prevent him from having a good eye to the value of land. He knew what he was about, as an owner of property should do, and certainly rode to hounds as well as any one of the boys of the period.