The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-03-02 00:00:00

Corrasponb mu.

NEWSPAPITIC LITERATURE IN DORS/2.1.
To the Editor of the Dorset Cooney Express as
Agricultural Oetzette.
DEAR STR,—There are ill-natarid people who insist
that Dorsetshire is • " degenerated county;" and I
must sky that if the specimens of general information,
and intellectual vigour whieb we are in the habit of
seeing in one of the so-called organs of public opinion,.
the Dorset County Chronicle, can be at all reganled as a
fair index of mental ability in this county, thew the-
standard of intelligence among us must be low indeed.
But I for one do not believe there is any truth in these
aspersions ; and I should like it to go forth, for the
honour and vindication a us all, that the Dorset County
Chronicle is far indeed from representing the intelligence
of Dorsetshire.
I have cut out and enclosed to you herewith a letter
in the Sherborrse Journal of Thursday it, which deals
so smartly and so justly with the proclaimed ignorance
of the Chronicle, Unit I hope you will not decline to
give it • place in your calms. The article to which that
letter refers, styled "The Laws of Foxhunting," is die
creditable in the highest degree, and pregnant with
every possible fault that can be found in the literary
effusions of the roost daring incapacity. I do really.
think the common sense of the denizens of these parts is
insulted by giving to the periodical dlikision of so
much unmitigated trash the appearance of public en,-
couragement and toleration. Why, Sir, this precious
article on "The Laws of Foxbunting" contains, not a
word on the said" Laws," from beginning to sad. It
sets out by declaring that the demonstration at the Far-
quharson dinner was such as to supply • powerful
motive for "special reference" to it; yet, imrnediatbly
afterwards, the inane writer declares that the meritsaE
that demonstration demand "no enlargement at his,
hands."(!) The writer still goes on, evidently at • loss.
what to say next, and plunges into that "fortuitous
concourse of atoms" which furnishes those many proofs
po
I nd
do en
hope,t.
of illiterate vulgarity and self-stultifying babble so
very properly shown up by your contemporary's oorres—
for the honour of the respectable portion of
the provincial press, and also for the reputation of the
county, you will keep your eye upon the pretensions of
a man whose handiwork appears to me only too likelv
to inflict serious injury on both.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours very truly,
TALLY-HO f
Buckland Newton, Feb. 27, 11158.

"IN VINO."
To the Editor of the Hherborne Journal.

the days of Rome's 'greatness in Wine there
was Truth; but in this degenerate age of gooseberry
Champagne and golden sherries at aix-and-thirty • demon,
the proverb should be altered to—" In wine thenr bp—
muddle." Your Thursday Dorchester contemporary-
th
supplied a proof of this in its last impression, which
contains one d ocf
fontuh,ede oddest
at jumbleslevoefr
rebrosdkenin-d=owyn.
l „
not excepting its own pages, when the wild Irishman
had control of them. After telling us that the "plain
tale at the festive board of the Farquharson Te,thoonial
dinner (the festive board of • dinner!) must be accepted
as a counter demonstration to all that has been going on
in the West for the last six months" (and, therefore, to
his own leaders inter a/la) he informs his readers that
Mr. Wingfield Digby is "a young gentleman just alone
into his vast property ;" that Mr. Farquharson's hounds
are in possession of his fox covers in the Vale of Belsoir
that Mr. Digby attempted, the other day, to draw
" all the corers in dispute." and that all these covers,
which he identifies with the whole Vale of Blackinoor,.
were drarni blank. I need not tell you, Sir, that the
Herculean feat of drawing all the Blaokmoor Vale covers
in a day, if ever attempted, would have secured a special
issue of Beles Life, and that it could not, by any oom-
, bination of circumstances, have resulted in a blank day.
But permit me to point out the muddled state of mind
of the writer who could commit such nonsense to paper.
The covers in dispute are Mr. Digby's own, and, more,
are in his own occupation. The assertion, therefore,
that not a a single fox had been preserved to him in
the Vale of Blackmoor is a self-evident absurdity; and
the insinuation that it is attempted to convey by such
assertion, viz., that no one of all the preservers in the
Vale could be found to show him a fox—only defeats its
object by its preposterous dimensions. After this exhi-
bition of ignorance and malevolence, one is not gar-
prised to read that Sir George Roe's opinion farmed
"a case ;" "that the Somersetahire gentleman speke,
through Major Harbin ;" and that 'the case being:
altered—that alters the case." The only "case" with,
which the editor appears to me to be thoroughly fami-
liar, is a ease of Sillery's. I judge so from his observa-
tion that "the character and deportment of the pre-
siding peer and the hilarious yeoman were such, that
after six hours' procedure, including dinner and Cham-
pagne, the company retired in an orderly manner ;" for
if it be necessary to make "a special reference" to the
fact that the noble chairman did not go home the worse
for the "procedure, dinner, and Champagne," it is a
, fair inference that on some people the effect was the
reverse, and that they went home with legs as unstable
as their own arguments, and with heads as muddled as
their own "leaders."