Here we take farewell of our hero; and I will say a few words on the way in which Surtees, in his sketches of country life, indicates his appreciation that a change is coming over the land. The Scamperdales, Jawleyfords, and the older families are disappearing and the new commercial and moneyed class is taking its place. Puffington and men of his type are beginning to come to the front. It is getting more difficult to live on the land, as the older gentry had done; and estates are becoming rather a tax on a commercial fortune than the support of an aristocratic family. Surtees represents the old landowners as somewhat out at elbows, trying in vain to compete with the new men who are buying up their estates. In one of his novels we have a great Jewish magnate, Sir Moses Mainchance, who would have been practically impossible twenty years earlier. Sport changes with society. The railway has made country and town one, as a few hours bring all England within reach of London. Hunting is ceasing to be the old friendly and almost family institution, where the neighbourhood gathered at the meet, and everybody was known and welcomed. It was already becoming an affair for the rich from all parts of the world; and the Scamperdales in vain tried to scare away the wealthy sportsman of the town by abusive language. The time was close at hand when his presence would be welcomed eagerly; and rural sport would be at an end. * * * * * We will now turn to another side of country life--namely, the social as portrayed by Anthony Trollope, who might also have been quoted as a writer on sport. Trollope, to my mind, has a real genius for interesting his readers in uninteresting people; because he describes so faithfully the characters one meets every day, gives their conversation exactly as they talked to one another, and exhibits them in the same commonplace attitude, in which we all are for the greater part of our lives. He wrote not by inspiration, when he felt in the mood, but regularly and systematically, turning out his novels, when he had leisure from his duties as a government official, at so many pages an hour. He says that he had little or no intimate knowledge of cathedral society; yet, to one who has opportunity of observing it somewhat closely, his descriptions appear to have the accuracy of a photograph.