THE BLACKSMITH 187 



key-carrying queen was most lavish in the larder. 

 Nothing, perhaps, can equal the gossip of a public- 

 house keeping country smith, and we often wonder 

 at gentlemen tolerating such nuisances on their estates. 

 They are the ruin of servants, and the general haunts 

 of idleness. It is an odd thing, but let the beer be 

 ever so good and strong and plentiful at the castle 

 or the hall, the servants will draw to the public-house 

 to spend their own money in trash. As this cannot 

 be for the sake of the drink, it must be for the sake 

 of the gossip, and let any tolerator of such a nuisance 

 picture to himself what the conversation is likely to 

 run upon. We have seen many a lazy skulking dog 

 dragging his legs along to the public-house, who could 

 never " find time " to go to church. 



With gratitude we say it, the Royal Veterinary 

 College has done much to eradicate a breed of men 

 who were at once the curse of horseflesh and the 

 country, and in lieu of the botching, bungling, 

 ignorant, self-sufficient, drunken, daring, kill or cure, 

 fear nought horse and cow-leeches of twenty or five- 

 and-twenty years ago, we have an educated race of 

 men, combining the business of shoers and veterinary 

 surgeons, who can be called in when a Groom or 

 Master's knowledge is exhausted or insufficient. In 

 consequence of the distribution of veterinary surgeons 

 through the country, we have got a better set of work- 

 ing smiths — men with some idea of the anatomy and 

 delicacy of a horse's foot, and not fellows who cut 

 and wrench and hammer and tear, as if it had no 

 more feeling than a vice or an anvil. Londoners have 

 no idea what an old country smith was like ; they 

 would do anything — set a limb, shoe a horse, make 

 a key, mend a gun, sharp a ploughshare, or prescribe 

 for horse, dog, cow, and even man. The division 

 between whitesmith and blacksmith is still unknown 

 in the greater part of the kingdom. 



Few libraries are without that useful work, "The 



