158 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



In like manner, although tlie Anglo-Saxon race are 

 proverbially phlegmatic (a word described by Johnson to 

 mean "dull; cold; frigid"), yet no sooner do they hear, 

 in the language of Shakspeare, 



" The musical confusion 

 Of hounds and eclio in conjunction," 



than the windows of manufactories are crowded with 

 pale eager faces, the lanes, paths, and fields become 

 dotted with the feet and ankles of people of various classes 

 and ages, whose eyes are all straining to get a glimpse 

 of the run. If Dolly be among them, her cow, wherever 

 she may be, is quite as curious as herself. 



As the fox, who has distanced his pursuers, lightly 

 canters along the hedge-side of a large grass field, the 

 sheep instantly not only congregate to stare at him, but 

 for a considerable time remain spell-bound, gazing in 

 the direction of his course. Herds of bullocks with 

 noses almost touching the ground, and with long straight 

 tails slanting upwards, jump sometimes into the air, and 

 sometimes sideways, with joy. As soon as the hounds 

 appear, the timid sheep instantly follow them, and 

 accordingly, almost before the leading rider can make 

 for and get through perhaps the only gap in an imprac- 

 ticable fence, eighty or a hundred of these " muttons," 

 with fat, throbbing, jolting sides, rush to and block up 

 the little passage, in and around which they stand. 



