A Penny of Observation ARMADO : How haat thou purchased
this experience ? MOTH : By my penny of observation.
(Love's Labour's Lost.)
THE NEW SIN.
If there is one thing viler than a landlord, it is a landlord who, in his spare time, practises those sports of the chase which were the chief delight, and the only out-of-doors recreation, of our rude and degenerate ancestors. Mr. C. E. M. • Joad brought this out well in his article, " A Charter for Walkers," in last week's Spectator. " Our civilization," he wrote, " thinks it more important that rich men " (with whom he presumably includes their poorer, but no less brutal, friends) " should have unhampered opportunities for the slaughter of birds, than that its citizens* should be given access to the heritage of natural loveliness. . . . &c., &c." That is a fine, rich, fruity sentence, and none the worse for having a somewhat familiar ring. The rest of the paragraph is full of good stuff, too. Mr. Joad draws a pathetic picture of the walker who " finds the countryside barred and fenced against him." He very sensibly refrains from weakening his indictment by adding that more than 99 per cent. of the fencing in this country is put up by farmers, the fact that it is not solely composed of barbed wire being due to the bestial and ridiculous fox-hunters. He is, indeed, guilty of a slight misstatement when he says that in the south the woods are increasingly preserved for the shooting of pheasants," for the reverse is actually the case. But minor errors are pardonable in so good a cause—as, for instance, when, in complaining that in the north the walker " is denied access to the moors " which are " sacred to the preservation of grouse," Mr. Joad suppresses all mention of the deer- forests (where the scenery and the gradients, being on a more spectacular scale, are much more attractive to walkers), and also of the fact that from few, if any, of either type of estate is the walker excluded for more than three or four
months in the year. * * *
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