8 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



Here again, as in the case of the stirrupless 

 saddle, we are lost in wonder at the fact, that men 

 should, for nearly a thousand years, have gone on 

 fastening plates of metal under horses' hoofs by the 

 clumsy means of strings and bands; and that it should 

 never in all that time have occurred to them to try 

 nails where strings had failed. Next to the inven- 

 tive powers of men there is really nothing so wonder- 

 ful as their want of inventiveness, and the stupid way in 

 which they will continue from generation to genera- 

 tion, doing something very absurd from mere force 

 of habit, and utter want of thought ! It is humi- 

 liating to think, how men have been content to remain 

 for ages separated by the smallest possible partitions 

 from discoveries in the arts, that tend to the conve- 

 nience and embellishment of life. We have had India 

 rubber ever since America was explored, yet, until a 

 few years ago, we made no use of it except for rubbing 

 pencil marks out of paper ! 



Here follows a charade by no less eminent a 

 person than the great statesman, Charles James 

 Fox. Why do we introduce it in this place ? 

 That is a question which the ingenious reader will 

 answer for himself when he shall have solved the 

 charade. The key to it will be found in the pre- 

 ceding pages : 



