a

in short, a species of slightly mitigated mad north-north-west ;- when the Mantalini, in high life of the year B.C. wind was southerly, he knew a hawk 1193. To us the strongest point of re- from a hand.saw." Tyrant as he was, semblance between Paris and the “ fed he had sanity enough to observe and horse" appears to be (to use, we hope despise the abject grovelling of the not profanely, the words of the Pro- bipeds of Rome, and boldness enough plet), that he “ neighed after his to hold it up to scorn by the appointneighbour's wife.”

But we are wax. ment of his quadruped favourite. If ing a little bit too classical.

it were madness, it had method in't. “ From the sublime to the ridien. Only fancy the terrors of the patricians lous there is but a step," as every in waiting, lest the newly made func.. body knows who knows any thing tionary should take it into his head to whatever ; indeed the quotation is so stretch his consular hind-leg without stale, and the fact so universally ad- giving warning! We once heard a mitted, that we should hardly have in- pragmatical young prig of a Cantab flicted it again on the defenceless (a Johnian, of course) observe, that public, had we thought about the mat- he must have been a most incorruptible ter, and must trust for our excuse to a magistrate, for he answered all improcertain villanous John-Bullish kind of per applications with a nay; and we habit we have, of blurting out what thought of the dictum of Samuel Johnever comes first into our heads, with. son, buttoned up our pockets, and out stopping to enquire whether it made ourselves scarce forthwith. has any business there or not. We Paul of Russia was mad, an' you met, the other day, with a beautiful will, when he ordered to be starved pendant to the old Greek's picture, in the honest horse. which had offended a passage descriptive of the Bengalee only by a stumble : his own end was breed of horses, from the pen of a happier only because more speedy. Captain Williamson :- oThe said And as to that king-making and kinghorses," says the facetious son of Mars, deposing Lord of Warwick, who stab“ have generally Roman noses, and bed his war-horse in cold blood before sharp narrow foreheads; much while the battle of Towton; for the sake of in their eyes, ill-shaped ears, square a nature otherwise noble, it were to be heads, thin necks, narrow chests, shal. wished he had been so too. low girtles, lavk bellies, cat hams, read how he met with his deserts on the goose rumps, and switch tails." The obelisk at Barnet Common. gallant Captain would, we fear, be We have read somewhere of a somewhat puzzled to draw a portrait, young French renegade, who conmerely from such a description as that fessed to Chateaubriand that he with which he has favoured us. never found brimself galloping alone

We are told that the “ new-disco. in the desert without a sensation vered people of the Indies, when the amounting to rapture; and though Spaniards first landed amongst them, we cannot speak from personal expehad so great an opinion, both of the rience either of “ antres vast or demen and the horses, that they looked serts idle,” we think we can manage upon them as gods, or as animals en. to enter into his feelings. Like nobled above their nature.” Well, Montaigne, “ we do not willingly the poor doomed barbarians went but alight when we are once on horseback; one step beyond nations who bore, in for it is the place where, whether well their time, the palm for civilisation. or sick, we find ourselves most at Horses have received funeral honours,

We know of nothing more and have had cities called after their glorious--nothing more inspiritingnames, without exciting any such smile nothing which more effectually dispels as that with which you just now treated from one's spirit the glooms, and the the simple Americans; and, though we mists, and the fogs, which gather do not recollect that they have ever round it so thickly in this "workingbeen actually deified, they have, at day world,” than a good stirring galany rate, enjoyed the highest honours lop across an open country; and, of mortality. What an exquisite piece should it chance to be at the tail of a of satire was that of Caligula, when he pack of foxhounds, why we think it nominated his horse to the office of not a whit the less inviting, and doubtconsul! Sheer madness, said you? less our horse would appreciate it far No, no. Like Hamlet, he " was but more fully. We really are unaffect

You may

a

edly sorry for those who never, with that butcher's nag had wellnigh anni. "a southerly wind and a cloudy sky” hilated'us! There he goes! gallopas the song has it, experienced the gallop-gallop! We verily believe a delight

butcher's horse doesn't even know how

to walk. At any rate, we can safely "To back the flying steed that challenges The wind for speed !-- seems native more of that pace.

swear we never saw one practising

We certainly have heard air

of their being occasionally discovered, Than earth! whose burden only lends him

in the rural districts, standing still at fire !

the yard.gates of country gentlemen ; Whose soul in his task turns labour into

but, when once in motion, it seems to sport, Who makes your pastime his ! I sit him

matter nothing whether it be hill or. now!

dale, town or country, highway or He takes away my breath! he makes me byway, crowd or clear. There is ever reel!

the same unvarying, reckless speed I touch not earth : I see not! hear not! the same headlong, break-neck, old, All

woman-slaying gallop-the same Is ecstasy of motion !”

“ Now, sir, a leetle on one side, if you

please !” Ah! as we live, our old Talk of Somerville, indeed, after She- acquaintance Tollit, and the varmint ridan Knowles! Lombard Street to Oxford " Age.” There are not many a China orange on the Irishman !- prettier things, to our thinking, than a and “no takers," as they say at Tat- well-appointed coach,“ tooling” along tersall's. Prattle not to us about a level road at the rate of ten miles an cruelty to animals! We would give hour, including stoppages. That idena trifle to tie one of your double- tical team now has, “many a time and distilled humanity-mongers upon. a oft,” transported us to the embraces of thorough-bred hunter, and start him our revered Alma Mater, and we look from the cover-side on a brisk January upon it with an eye of more than commorning, with a full field and a burn- mon affection. We have ourselves ing scent, just to convince him that not unfrequently handled those very the biped is not the only animal that ribbons, and wielded that very silvertakes a pleasure in the burst. If he mounted whip, dexterously disturbing did not come home stiff, skinless, and, many a meditative fly from his dream albeit against his will, converted, we of happiness on the ear of the off-leader. would be content never to follow. See! they are off again ! no shirkinghound and horn again. And now we no hanging back-one slight tug-one will stroll out to Verey's, and swallow gentlest hint of the whipcord—and ice; for we have Philippicised our away they go, “light as a bird on

, selves into a perspiration.

wing." Eleven o'clock !-why, that Often as we have polished the pavé sleepy old fellow of All Souls, in the of Oxford Street, we have never yet inside corner, will be at his own col. learned to saunter along with that lege-gate just in happy hour to realize stoical, or rather cynical, indifference his heaven-sent vision of hall-dinner. to every thing save pretty faces and We think it no less an authority slender ankles, which distinguishes than Nimrod_not the mighty hunter the exquisite of the present day. We of ancient, but the mighty scribbler of shall be taken for country cousins all modern, days—who says, that the life our life long ; we are continually of a coach-horse in a crack team, losing ourselves in wondering con. well-fed, well-housed, well-groomed, templation of the passing scene; and and lightly worked, is beyond all ques. we are continually losing, par con- tion the most desirable state of equine sequence,

our pockethandkerchief. existence. Here

may you observe that wonderful We defy the most “ cruel-hearted animal Man in all his varieties, from cur" under heaven to stop and look the duke to the dustman-here may for five seconds at a London hack you admire that generous brute the cab-horse, waiting for a fare, without horse in every~" Hoy, hoy! you being moved to pity. Take, for inthere! Get out of the way, can't you?" stance, the third in yonder line-obMercy upon us ! we were within an serve the hairless, fleshless, almost ace of making a job for Mr Wakly; skinless, ribs-the weak and tottering and his twelve good men and true fore-legs-the dull eye and the droop.

66

ing head-the "raw" but too plainly nor altogether uriconscious of the advisible underneath the collar-the miration he is exciting. His very shrunken carcass, for which the shake of the head implies a scorn of shafts, narrow as they are, are yet the lanky, weellike things that ever

a world too wide." Watch him, and anon flit by him, unworthy, in as he mumbles the contents of his his opinion, of the name of horse ;scanty nose.bag-positively he has the razor-faced, spare.necked, delicate. hardly spirit enough left to swallow legged, bang-tailed exquisites of the his miserable pittance !-there he race; the paragons of Rotten Row stands, the very picture of patient, and the Outer Circle- the cynosure uncomplaining misery. And yet, of ladies' eyes—the admiration and ·most probably, before we are a hun- envy of lawyers' clerks, linen drapers' dred yards off, that wretched ana- apprentices, and Sunday swells of tomy will be tearing through the every possible species and descriptown with an almost railroad velocity, tion. See with what sublime complaand endangering the lives of a thou- cency he regards that yelping cur that sand harmless subjects of her most madly leapeth at his august nose, and gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, at trembleth not even to snap at his ma. the corner of every thoroughfare in jestic heels ! How would a less phiLondon. For the sake of your loving losophical “ tit” shy, and sidle, and wife and affectionate family, venture prance, and toss his indignant head, not to cross his path! He is not the and “yerk out his armed heel" against same horse that he was five minutes the audacious assailant;—but not so past ;- -a change has come over him, he-he, disdaining so inglorious a -a new spirit has possessed him. foe, looketh down with calm contempt He seems to rush along the streets upon the vain efforts of the scurvy with a recklessness which nothing but tyke to arouse his wrath ; and hear. the extreme of misery could inspire: eth with magnanimous pity the howl there is despair in his face, graven as of the offender as he limps lamely plainly as with an iron.

Life has no. away from the lash of the avenging thing worse in store for him, and the drayman! sooner he escapes from it the better! Whatever nonsense—we are going Alas! happy, even in his wretched to fly off at a tangent-whatever nonness, that he cannot look forward sense Byron may have talked about four or five days into the future, and the superfluous amount of knowledge behold that last, that crowning scene respecting the old Greeks, he was of equine misery, the yard of the himself any thing but a despiser of knacker!

them. He inherited, to its fullest ex. And now turn about, as you love tent, their admiration of horses, or he a contrast, and look for a minute at could never have written Mazeppa. that dray of Meux's as it comes thun- Of that glorious poem, the horse, dering along over Claridge's Patent. and not the man, is, to our thinking, Saw you ever such a Daniel Lambert the hero. The worthy Hetman is of a horse as that fellow at the head somewhatquaint and rude in speech," of the team ? He drags along that and garnishes the story of his audaponderous machine, laden as it is with cious amour with one or two pithy " the good barley-wine which our fore- practical maxims, which go far to fathers did use to drink of,” with as deaden the interest which we might much ease as we would the toy.cart otherwise feel for him, and his mis. of our youngest born, who is but just tress, in a double sense.

Of course out of his long-clothes. Do but lis. we pity him, but still not with that ten to the sound of his hoof upon the pity which is “ akin to love." But pavement, and fancy for a moment, if the horse! to him we can give ouryour nerves will allow you, your worst selves up heart and soul-pity him as he corn awaiting its next descent! Proud struggles, “ fiercely but in vain,"' to is he, bad taste of his though it be, of burst from the unwonted shacklehis plaited main and tail ;-(we would dash away with him-away! away! rather see them swing about, as Tommy like lightning to the desert, which, Moore says of Norah's robe,“ as nature though it be death to man, is to him pleases ;")-proud is he of his brass. life, and happiness, and home !-start bedizened head gear-proud of his with him at the groan wrung from his size, his strength, and his occupation; helpless burden by the extremity of

suffering-speed away with him from fidel, the Cid Ruy Diaz Campeador, the hungry wolves that howl faintly and his good horse Bavieca ? From and more faintly upon his track, the days of Odin and his “ coal-black though he hears them not, thinks steed" upwards, there is scarce a hero not of them-bis speed, his thought, of “ tradition, legend, tale, or song, is for his home-plunge with him who has not his favourite; and black, into the wild rush of waters-strain by the way, seems to have been a colwith bim “up the repelling bank"- our in high estimation.

There are sink with him at last beneath the one or two black ones of date more overpowering trial-summon every modern, and reality more unquestionenergy to greet once more the com- able, than that of the monarch of Valpanions of his freedom — and weep, halla, which, albeit disdained or overay, weep, that it should be too late! looked by historians, may take their We know not a finer picture in all station in the records of their race the painting of poetry than this of beside the most renowned of antiquity. “the dying or the dead,” with the The Scottish peasant, as he tells his startled denizens of the wilderness offspring the tale of the too dearly careering wildly around them, and won field of Kiliiecrankie, still couples finally scouring off to the forest from the name of the gallant Claverhouse the majesty of man,

unsubdued even with that of his charmed war-horse, by that agony:

Midnight:- the fame of " the horse There are few heroes, of whatever of the highwayman, Bonny Black creed or clime, whose glory has come Bess,” need fear no oblivion, so long down to our own time, and whose as the " ignominious tree” spares one names and deeds, however remote bold Clerk of St Nicholas to pour à their day, are still “ familiar in men's midnight_libation to the memory

of mouths as household words," whose Richard Turpin.* favourite horses have not come in for Nor are there wanting others-- foals a share of their well-earned fame. of the fancy-steeds of the imagination Alexander had his Bucephalus--that which yet stand before our eyes with tameless steed who brooked no rider all the vividness of reality, to whose save the conqueror of the world that existence our affections cling, in defaithful servant who, reeling with his spite of our colder reason, with a redeath-wound, yet called up all his fail- gular John-Gilpin-like tenacity. Even ing energies to bear his lord to safety, as fabling gossips, who, by frequent ere he sank and died ? Oh Arrian! repetition, bring themselves to an inArrian! much indeed hast thou to an. corrigible belief in their own mendaswer for, who darest tell us, in the cious anilities, we have gradually só teeth of so bright a legend, that he increased and cemented our acquaintsuccumbed to thirty years and an ance with them, as to render them as Asiatic climate !

it were a part of our very selves; and Who has not heard of the Arab An. the moment that convinced us of treir tar, and his horse Abjir,“ whose positive nonentity, would, we verily hoofs were flat as beaten coin : when believe, go far to plunge us into a he neighed he seemed about to speak, state of universal scepticism. Never and his ears were like quills: whose be thy memory uncherished, O chosen sire was Wasil, and whose dam He- destrier of the valorous Manchegan, mema ?"

- most fitting bearer of the Knight of Who knows not of the pride of the Rueful Countenance!—thou who, Spain and the glory of chivalry--of though thou hadst“more corners than him “ who was born in happy hour" a real,” didst yet retain, even in thine to humble the pride of the lying in advanced age, some smack of thy

Talking of Dick Turpin reminds us of Mr Ainsworth's novel or romance, or what. ever he pleases to call it, Rookwood, and of Turpin's ride to York there in ; the admirable telling of which feat has alone, we suspect, saved the rest of the book, cleverish though it be, from the “deep damnation” of the critic's “ Bah!” Where may be matched the descriptions of three such rides, and for three such purposes, as those of Turpin, Mazeppa, and John Gilpin? The first for life—the second for death-and the third (which appeals more touchingly than either to the feelings of Englishmen) for a good dinner,

:

youth; ay, even when that simple a sort of bonne-bouche, to reward the squire deemed that thy " loveless eye” exemplary patience with which you might gaze unmoved “

upon all the have suffered us to gabble on so long mares in the meadows of Cordova." after our own fashion and liking: and, Most patient of sufferers! Most stoical curiously enough, we have drunk it of steeds ! Most immortal, incompar. from the same source which furnished able, incontinent Rozinante!

us with a similar peace-offering when Nor be thou forgotten, whose high we had that long Spring morning gosprivilege it was to bear into a hundred sip about things in general, and puppy. är hair.breadth 'scapes” the weight of dogs in particular, and which you were that most “ valiant bumpkin," hight then pleased, as we recollect, to reHudibras ; thou who wert

ceive so graciously. You cannot sure.

ly have forgotten the dog of Roderick! “ Sturdy, large, and tall, With mouth of meal, and eyes of wall ;"

Of course you have not, and we beg

your pardon for even hinting at the thou of the strutting ribs” and “drag- possibility. Well then, look here upon gling tail ;” thou who hast in all men's another picture from the same master memories a “local habitation” though pencil. The battle bas been fought not a name; and who, nameless as

and won—the pride of “ the lying thou art, art yet immortal!

Ishmaelite” has been signally crushed But alas! we are all this while but

-the long-forgotten war-cry has been touching a note to which there is no

once more heard—the sword of the answering chord—we are telling the traitor has “ found bloody work” in tales, and feeling with the feelings, of the grasp of the true man—the good a bygone age! The spirit of a mighty horse has borne his ancient lord to change is abroad. The men of the

“ the last, the happiest of his fields." time to come, will look back with con

Spain has been delivered—but where tempt upon the horse-loving genera- is the deliverer? Has he parted and tions of the past-the “ cura nitentes left no trace? Yes, one; but alas ! pascere equos" will be a thing unknown an unavailing oneto our grandchildren—the “ gratia currus" will be confined to the rail.

« On the banks road train and the monster balloon :

Of Sella was Orelio found ; his legs there cometh fast upon us

And Aanks incarnadined

- his poitrel an age

smear'd of boiling water and hydrogen gas,

With froth, and foam, and gore-his silver before whose dawning beams the Sun of Newmarket, and the Stars of the

Sprinkled with blood, which hung on every Four-in-hand Club, must alike" begin

hair to pale their ineffectual fires !" The

Aspersed like dewdrops :-trembling there signs of the times, as an execrable

he stood civil [?) engineer had the impertinence From the toil of battle, and at times sent to tell us the other morning, appear forth daily more in-horse-picious, and the

His tremulous voice, far echoing loud and position of that animal in society is shrill, growing rapidly more un-stable. The A frequent, anxious cry, with which he last of the race will soon, we fear, be

seem'd cooped up in a ten-feet square crib in To call the master whom he loved so well, the Zoological Gardens, and we shall And who had thus again forsaken him." be compelled, malgrè nous, to travel in the first class.

Who shall doubt that he was tended' But “ grieving's a folly,” as the

in accordance with his lord's affecsong says, or at any rate very nearly

tionate injunction, related to one.

A few words more, " As did beseem the steed which had so and we have done. We have kept one

oft of our very particular favourites, as

Carried a king to battle ? "

mane