186 "IF YOU MORE WOULD ASK, I SHUN NO QUESTIONS.'' 



place yourself by some means in situations where you 

 can hear their private conversations, get intimately 

 acquainted with the tools or means employed, and per- 

 fectly learn how those tools are made use of: then, 

 and not till then, is any one qualified to give beneficial 

 hints and advice to others. How or why I have 

 placed myself in situations to have seen so much of 

 the subjects of these hints and observations, matters 

 nothing to the public: suffice it to say, I have seen 

 them much, and now offer the results of such obser- 

 vations to others, to whom I shall only say, 



" Si quid novisti rectius istis 

 Candidus imperti, si non his utere mecum." 



There is no nation in Europe where the horse is 

 made an object of so much importance as in England ; 

 consequently Englishmen are, taking them in the 

 aggregate, the best judges of horses in Europe. Most 

 of our nobility and men of fortune are so, and 

 English horses are now become, taking them in all 

 the various purposes to which they are applied, un- 

 questionably the best in the world. The Arab is 

 certainly as particular in the breed of his horse, and 

 in the care of him, as we are here ; but his attention 

 and care are directed to one particular description of 

 horse, and he knows of no other ; it is left for Eng- 

 land to produce horses all bred for, and adapted to, 

 their various purposes, and each of his own class the 

 finest animal in the world. Horses for draught, for 

 the road, and for the turf have been bred among 

 other nations, and for these purposes animals have 

 been produced of a moderate quality. But the Leices- 

 tershire hunter has been till within a very few years 

 a description of horse confined to the United King- 



