2 28 The Book of the Horse. 



for admiration in the fine cliarger or the park-hack. They were hardy in constitution, or they 

 could not have borne long days of rough weather, coarse fodder, and indifferent stables. They 

 were required to carry their riders not for an hour or two occasionally, for the sake of consti- 

 tutional exercise or fashion, but from day to day, for two or three hundred miles, and that with 

 an easy even walk, trot, or canter. 



Boswell, writing in 1766 to his friend Temple of a journey to Glasgow, says, "I shall 

 chaise it all the way — thanks to the man who invented that comfortable method of journey- 

 ing ! Had it not been for tliat, I dare say both you and I would have circumscribed our 

 travels w ithin a very few miles. For my own part, I think to dress myself in a great-coat and 

 boots, and get astride a horse's back, and be jolted through mire, perhaps through wind and 

 rain, is a punishment too severe for all the offences I can charge myself with." This praise 

 of the post-chaise reminds us that Dr. Samuel Johnson, the demi-god of Bozzy's idolatry, con- 

 sidered riding in a post-chaise with a pretty woman one of the greatest luxuries of life. Yet 

 even the ponderous Doctor, as little like a horseman as any literary man, ancient or modern, 

 provided himself with a pair of silver spurs, and rode post-horses — the only mode of convey- 

 ance during his journey through Scotland and the Hebrides. 



After half a century of stage coaches had tempted most travellers on to wheels, came 

 railroads, and destroyed the roadside inns, where the horseman used to find a warm welcome 

 after a long, hard day. On the great north road, where twenty years ago the crack of the 

 postillion's whip and the blast of the guard's horn, the rattling of hoofs and the jingling of 

 pole-chains, resounded night and day, you cannot now make sure of a dry bed, a decent meal, 

 or even a feed of corn. As for ostlers, the race is extinct ; if you choose to ride or drive, you 

 must bring your groom, or groom your horse yourself. 



This decay of inns renders impossible feats performed by men of our own time, though of 

 the last generation. Old Dick Tattersall, the uncle of the present head of that famous firm, 

 had a relay of hacks on the road between London and Grantham. He used to mount, after 

 a hard day's work in the auction pulpit at the abolished Corner, ride down one hundred and 

 eight miles before morning, hunt the next day with the Belvoir hounds, and return by the same 

 means to his duties. Sir Tatton Sykes of .Sledmere, the last of the real squires, who was 

 satisfied to spend a large income at home on hospitality, field sports, agriculture, and breeding 

 Leicester sheep, and horses to win the Derby, without troubling either the world of politics 

 or the world of fashion, or the world of betting men either, had a way of travelling (with as 

 little baggage as Sir Charles Napier) to Epsom to see the Derby run, or to an equal distance 

 to ride a race, that would now be impossible. Wherever he slept the first night he borrowed 

 next morning a clean shirt from the landlord, and left his own to be washed ready for his re- 

 turn. He repeated the operation at each resting-place on the road, returning by instalments 

 each borrowed garment, until he arrived back at Sledmere in his own shirt. A small valise 

 carried the satin breeches and silk stockings that replaced his leathers and long boots in 

 ♦.he evening. The operation was ingenious, primitive, and clean ; but at the present hour the 

 landlords with frilled shirts have followed the way of satin breeches, and are known no more. 



Enduring hacks of the old sort are now only to be found in the hands of active farmers, 

 who look over hundreds of acres before breakfast, of country surgeons human and veterinary, 

 of maltsters, and a few other callings which take their followers out of the main tracks on to 

 short cuts and bridle-roads. In pasture countries the young farmer fond of hunting usually 

 prefers .something better than a roadster — one that will grow into money. But the majorit\- 

 of modern farmers prefer wheels, or are generally satisfied with anything useful that will 



