The _Times_ lately observed that our young nobles would do worse than
lay to heart the following words, given by Mr Froude in his _Short
Studies from Great Subjects_: 'Amusement is the wine of existence,
warming and feeding heart and brain. But amusement, like wine also,
if taken in excess becomes as stupid as any other form of vulgar
debauchery. When we read of some noble lord, with two of his friends,
shooting two thousand pheasants in a week, or that another has shot
four hundred brace of partridges to his own gun in a day, we perceive
that these illustrious personages have been useful to the London
poulterers; but it is scarcely the work for which they are intended by
the theory of their existence. The annual tournament of doves between
Lords and Commons at Hurlingham leads to odd conclusions about us on
the continent. Every institution--even the institution of a landed
aristocracy--is amenable to general opinion, and it may have worse
enemies than an Irish Land Act.'