Finally, the countryman who feels discontented with his lot—­and there are few indeed who do not occasionally pine for a change of employment—­should go on a railway journey through “the black country” at night, and mark the fierce light that reddens the murky skies as the factory fires send forth their livid flames and clouds of sooty smoke.  He should watch the swarms of long-suffering human beings going to and fro and in and out like busy bees around their hive, toiling, ever toiling, round about the blazing fires.  He should spend an hour in the streets of Birmingham, where, as I passed through one fine September morning recently on my way to Ireland, the atmosphere was darkened and the human lungs stifled by a thick yellow fog.  Or he should go down to the engine-room of a mighty liner, when it is doing its twenty knots across the seas, and then think of his own life in the happy hamlets and the fresh, green fields of our English country.

* * * * *

Coming once more down the hill into the valley of the Coln, we must cross the old Roman road known as the Fossway, follow the course of the stream, and, about a mile beyond the snug little village of Fossbridge, we reach the great woods of Chedworth.

These coverts form part of the property of Lord Eldon.  His house of Stowell stands well up on the hill.  It is a grey, square building of some size, placed so as to catch all the sun and the breezes too,—­very much more healthy and bright than most of the old houses we have passed, which were built much too low down in the valley, where the winter sunbeams seldom penetrate and the river mists rise damp and cold at night.  As we walk along the drive which leads through the woods to the Roman villa, any amount of rabbits and pheasants are to be seen.  And here take place annually some of those big shoots which ignorant people are so fond of condemning as unsportsmanlike, simply because they have not the remotest idea what they are talking about.  Why it should be cruel to kill a thousand head in a day instead of two hundred on five separate days, one fails to understand.  As a matter of fact, the bigger the “shoot” the less cruelty takes place, because bad shots are not likely to be present on these occasions, whilst in small “shoots” they are the rule rather than the exception.  Instead of birds and ground game being wounded time after time, at big battues they are killed stone dead by some well-known and acknowledged good shot.  To see a real workman knocking down rocketer after rocketer at a height which would be considered impossible by half the men who go but shooting is to witness an exhibition of skill and correct timing which can only be attained by the most assiduous practice and the quickest of eyes.  No, it is the pottering hedgerow shooter, generally on his neighbour’s boundary, who is often unsportsmanlike.  We know one or two who would have no hesitation in shooting at a covey of partridges on the ground, when they were within shot of the boundary hedge; and if they wounded three or four and picked them up, they would carry them home fluttering and gasping, because they are too heartless to think of putting the wretched creatures out of their sufferings.