' LIKE A COMET, THEY ARE " WONDERED AT." 39 



pointed in their expectations of foxes beating them in 

 the early part of the season : but now our horses are 

 nearly as fit to go a clipper at one time as another. 

 AVe may not, perhaps, in racing phrase, " have got as 

 long a length " into them ; but so far as a burst of 

 four miles goes, the nags are quite up to the mark. 

 The pace kills often now-a-days, and always will ; 

 but to horses in the condition they must have been 

 fifty years since, it would have been battle, murder, 

 and sudden death. Hunting men of 1745 would 

 be as much astonished as we were at first by the 

 railroads, if they could walk round the stables at 

 Melton and see the size of the horses selected by a 

 12 st. man to carry him: I grant 12st. is not a great 

 weight ; but I have personally found less sometimes 

 quite enough and to spare, and I always rode big 

 ones too. People say, and with great truth, there 

 are more good little ones than good big ones. It is 

 very likely there should be, for there are ten times 

 as many little hunting-like horses to pick from as 

 there are of big ones. Some very little horses are 

 no doubt wonders, and can go with any thing and 

 any where ; but if it was found, in selecting two 

 hundred horses all of the same shape, make, and 

 breeding, the one hundred small, the other large, 

 that the small horses could do what the larger can, 

 the little horses would no longer be wonders. 1 

 therefore must think, that though there being more 

 good little than big horses may really be taken aupied 

 de la lettre, there being actually more of them, if there 

 were as many large horses of the same quality to be 

 got, the saying would be discontinued. We very 

 properly expect less of a little horse than a large one, 

 and are therefore surprised when we find him crossing 



D 4 



