vermin imported from all parts.—fox-hunting.—shooting.—destruction of the game.—rural sports.
the king of england has a regular bug-destroyer in his household! a relic no doubt of dirtier times; for the english are a truly clean people, and have an abhorrence of all vermin. this loathsome insect seems to have been imported from france. an english traveller of the early part of the seventeenth century calls it the french punaise; which should imply either that the bug was unknown in his time, or had been so newly imported as to be still regarded as a frenchman. it is still confined to large cities, and is called in the country, where it is known only by name, 286the london bug; a proof of foreign extraction.
it seems to be the curse of this country to catch vermin from all others: the hessian fly devours their turnips; an insect from america has fastened upon the apple-trees, and is destroying them; it travels onward about a league in a year, and no means have yet been discovered of checking its progress. the cockroach of the west indies infests all houses near the river in london, and all sea-port towns; and the norway rats have fairly extirpated the aboriginal ones, and taken possession of the land by right of conquest. as they came in about the same time as the reigning family, the partisans of the stuarts used to call them hanoverians. they multiply prodigiously, and their boldness and ferocity almost surpass belief: i have been told of men from whose heads they have sucked the powder and pomatum during their sleep, and of children whom they have attacked in the night and mangled. 287if the animals of the north should migrate, like their country barbarians, in successive shoals, each shoal fiercer than the last, it is the hamsters’ turn to come after the rats, and the people of england must take care of themselves. an invasion by rafts and gun-boats would be less dangerous.
a lady of j—’s acquaintance was exceedingly desirous, when she was in andalusia, to bring a few live locusts home with her, that she might introduce such beautiful creatures into england. certainly, had she succeeded, she ought to have applied to the board of agriculture for a reward.
foxes are imported from france in time of peace, and turned loose upon the south coast to keep up the breed for hunting. there is certainly no race of people, not even the hunting tribes of savages, who delight so passionately as the english in this sport. the fox-hunter of the last generation was a character as utterly unlike any other in society, and as totally absorbed 288in his own pursuits, as the alchemist. his whole thoughts were respecting his hounds and horses; his whole anxiety, that the weather might be favourable for the sport; his whole conversation was of the kennel and stable, and of the history of his chases. one of the last of this species, who died not many years ago, finding himself seriously ill, rode off to the nearest town, and bade the waiter of the inn bring him in some oysters and porter, and go for a physician. when the physician arrived he said to him, “doctor, i am devilish ill,—and you must cure me by next month, that i may be ready for foxhunting.” this, however, was beyond the doctor’s power. one of his acquaintance called in upon him some little time after, and asked what was his complaint. “they tell me,” said he, “’tis a dyspepsy. i don’t know what that is, but some damn’d thing or other, i suppose!”—a definition of which every sick man will feel the force.
but this race is extinct, or exists only 289in a few families, in which the passion has so long been handed down from father to son, that it is become a sort of hereditary disease. the great alteration in society which has taken place during the present reign, tends to make men more like one another. the agriculturist has caught the spirit of commerce; the merchant is educated like the nobleman; the sea-officer has the polish of high life; and london is now so often visited, that the manners of the metropolis are to be found in every country gentleman’s house. but though hunting has ceased to be the exclusive business of any person’s life, except a huntsman’s, it is still pursued with an ardour and desperate perseverance beyond even that of savages: the prey is their object, for which they set their snares or lie patiently in wait:—here the pleasure is in the pursuit. it is no uncommon thing to read in the newspapers of a chase of ten or twelve leagues,—remember, all this at full speed, and without intermission,—dogs, men, 290and horses equally eager and equally delighted, though not equally fatigued. facts are recorded in the annals of sporting, how the hunted animal, unable to escape, has sprung from a precipice, and some of the hounds have followed it; and of a stag, which, after one of these unmerciful pursuits, returned to its own lair, and, leaping a high boundary with its last effort, dropped down dead,—the only hound which had kept up with it to the last, dying in like manner by its side. the present king, who is remarkably fond of the sport, once followed a deer till the creature died with pure fatigue.
this was the only english custom which william of nassau thoroughly and heartily adopted, as if he had been an englishman himself. he was as passionately addicted to it as his present successor, and rode as boldly, making it a point of honour never to be outdone in any leap, however perilous. a certain mr cherry, who was devoted to the exiled family, took occasion 291of this, to form perhaps the most pardonable design which ever was laid against a king’s life. he regularly joined the royal hounds, put himself foremost, and took the most desperate leaps, in the hope that william might break his neck in following him. one day, however, he accomplished one so imminently hazardous, that the king, when he came to the spot, shook his head and drew back.
shooting is pursued with the same zeal. many a man, who, if a walk of three leagues were proposed to him, would shrink from it as an exertion beyond his strength, will walk from sun-rise till a late dinner hour, with a gun upon his shoulder, over heath and mountain, never thinking of distance, and never feeling fatigue. a game book, as it is called, is one of the regular publications, wherein the sportsman may keep an account of all the game he kills, the time when, the place where, and chronicle the whole history of his campaigns! the preservation of the game becomes 292necessarily an object of peculiar interest to the gentry, and the laws upon this subject are enforced with a rigour unknown in any other part of europe. in spite of this, it becomes scarcer every year: poaching, that is, killing game without a privilege so to do, is made a trade: the stage-coaches carry it from all parts of the kingdom to the metropolis for sale, and the larders of all the great inns are regularly supplied; they who would eagerly punish the poacher, never failing to encourage him by purchasing from his employers. another cause of destruction arises from the resentment of the farmers, who think that, as the animals are fed upon their grounds, it is hard that they should be denied the privilege of profiting by them. at a public meeting of the gentry in one of the northern provinces, a hamper came directed to the president, containing two thousand partridges’ eggs carefully packed. some species by these continual persecutions have been quite rooted out, others 293are nearly extinct, and others only to be found in remote parts of the island. sportsmen lament this, and naturalists lament it also with better reason.
one of the most costly works which i shall bring home is a complete treatise upon rural sports, with the most beautiful decorations that i have ever seen: it contains all possible information upon the subject, the best instructions, and annals of these sciences, as they may be termed in england. i have purchased it as an exquisite specimen of english arts, and excellently characteristic of the country, more especially as being the work of a clergyman. he might have seen in his bible that the mighty hunters there are not mentioned as examples; and that, when christ called the fishermen, he bade them leave the pursuit, for from thenceforth they should catch men.
