A LoviiR OF Horses. 271 



blind passion, the horse being a noble and generous creature, intended by the All-Wise to 

 be the helper and friend of man, to whom he stands next in the order of creation. On many 

 occasions of my life I have been much indebted to the horse, and have found in him a friend 

 and coadjutor, when human help and sympathy were not to be obtained. . It is therefore natural 

 enough that I should love the horse. 



" I cannot help thinking that it was fortunate for myself, who am to a certain extent a 

 philologist, tliat with me the pursuit of languages has been always modified by the love of 

 horses ; for scarcely had I turned my mind to the former, when I also mounted the wild 

 cob, and hurried forth in the direction of Devil's Hill, scattering dust and flint stones on 

 every side. That ride, amongst other things, taught me that a lad with thews and sinews 

 was intended by Nature for something better than mere word-culling ; and if I have accomplished 

 anything in after life worthy of mentioning, I believe it may partly be attributed to the ideas 

 which that ride, by setting my blood in a glow, infused into my brain. I might otherwise 

 have become a mere philologist, one of those beings who toil night and day in culling useless 

 words for some opus viagnuin which Murray will never publish, and nobody ever read ; beings 

 without enthusiasm, who never having mounted a generous steed, cannot detect a good point 

 in Pegasus himself; like a certain philologist, who, though acquainted with the exact value 

 of every word in the Greek and Latin languages, could observe no particular beauty in one 

 of the most glorious of Homer's rhapsodies. What knew he of Pegasus .' He had never 

 mounted a generous steed ; the merest jockey, had the strain been interpreted to him, would 

 have called it a brave song ! " 



