THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 77 



manic nations have always held beef in favor, and 

 they alone know how to prepare it so as to make it 

 savory and nutritive. In Germany as in England, in 

 Sweden as in Norway and Denmark, the German 

 blood announces itself by this unfailing test. The 

 Roman nations, i. e. the French, the Spaniards, and 

 the Italians, have all something in common in their 

 kitchen as in their language and history. The Tartar 

 princes, long domesticated in St. Petersburg, and ac- 

 customed to every Western luxury, still have their 

 feasts of horseflesh, which is dressed in twenty differ- 

 ent forms, and which they wash down with the choicest 

 vintages of France and Germany. 



Stow makes no mention of horse-baiting as among 

 the pastimes of the Londoners in former days, and for 

 the honor of our ancestors we could hope that so 

 brutal a sport was seldom witnessed ; but that it was 

 occasionally practised is certain. Ass-baiting, although 

 more common, does not appear to have become very 

 popular ; not probably from any lack of inclination to 

 torment, but because the poor ass resisted feebly, and 

 made but little sport. In Malcolm's "Anecdotes of 

 London" we are told that, so late as 1682, horse-bait- 

 ing was witnessed, and under circumstances of singu- 

 lar barbarity. Notice was given in the public papers 

 that on the 12th of April, a horse of uncommon 

 strength, and between eighteen and nineteen hands 

 high, would be baited to death at his Majesty's bear- 



