edly sorry for those who never, with "a southerly wind and a cloudy sky" as the song has it, experienced the delight
"To back the flying steed that challenges
The wind for speed!—seems native more of air
Than earth! whose burden only lends him fire!
Whose soul in his task turns labour into sport,—
Who makes your pastime his! I sit him now!
He takes away my breath! he makes me reel!
I touch not earth! I see not! hear not! All
Is ecstasy of motion!"
Talk of Somerville, indeed, after Sheridan Knowles! Lombard Street to a China orange on the Irishman!—and "no takers," as they say at Tattersall's. Prattle not to us about cruelty to animals! We would give a trifle to tie one of your double-distilled humanity-mongers upon a thorough-bred hunter, and start him from the cover-side on a brisk January morning, with a full field and a burning scent, just to convince him that the biped is not the only animal that takes a pleasure in the burst. If he did not come home stiff, skinless, and, albeit against his will, converted, we would be content never to follow hound and horn again. And now we will stroll out to Verey's, and swallow ice; for we have Philippicised ourselves into a perspiration.
Often as we have polished the pavé of Oxford Street, we have never yet learned to saunter along with that stoical, or rather cynical, indifference to every thing save pretty faces and slender ankles, which distinguishes the exquisite of the present day. We shall be taken for country cousins all our life long; we are continually losing ourselves in wondering contemplation of the passing scene; and we are continually losing, par consequence, our pocket-handkerchief. Here may you observe that wonderful animal Man in all his varieties, from the duke to the dustman—here may you admire that generous brute the horse in every—"Hoy, hoy! you there! Get out of the way, can't you?" Mercy upon us! we were within an ace of making a job for Mr Wakly, and his twelve good men and true—that butcher's nag had wellnigh annihilated us! There he goes! gallop—gallop—gallop! We verily believe a butcher's horse doesn't even know how to walk. At any rate, we can safely swear we never saw one practising that pace. We certainly have heard of their being occasionally discovered, in the rural districts, standing still at the yard-gates of country gentlemen; but, when once in motion, it seems to matter nothing whether it be hill or dale, town or country, highway or byway, crowd or clear. There is ever the same unvarying, reckless speed—the same headlong, break-neck, old-woman-slaying gallop—the same "Now, sir, a leetle on one side, if you please!" Ah! as we live, our old acquaintance Tollit, and the varmint Oxford "Age." There are not many prettier things, to our thinking, than a well-appointed coach, "tooling" along a level road at the rate of ten miles an hour, including stoppages. That identical team now has, "many a time and oft," transported us to the embraces of our revered Alma Mater, and we look upon it with an eye of more than common affection. We have ourselves not unfrequently handled those very ribbons, and wielded that very silver-mounted whip, dexterously disturbing many a meditative fly from his dream of happiness on the ear of the off-leader. See! they are off again! no shirking—no hanging back—one slight tug—one gentlest hint of the whipcord—and away they go, "light as a bird on wing." Eleven o'clock!—why, that sleepy old fellow of All Souls, in the inside corner, will be at his own college-gate just in happy hour to realize his heaven-sent vision of hall-dinner. We think it is no less an authority than Nimrod—not the mighty hunter of ancient, but the mighty scribbler of modern, days—who says, that the life of a coach-horse in a crack team, well-fed, well-housed, well-groomed, and lightly worked, is beyond all question the most desirable state of equine existence.
We defy the most "cruel-hearted cur" under heaven to stop and look for five seconds at a London hack cab-horse, waiting for a fare, without being moved to pity. Take, for instance, the third in yonder line—observe the hairless, fleshless, almost skinless, ribs—the weak and tottering fore-legs—the dull eye and the droop-
