HOESES AND HOUNDS. 45 



To tliose who have not been accustomed to horses from 

 early youth, the management of them is a sealed volume which 

 they do not care perhaps to break open and look into, and 

 therefore everything is left to their grooms ; they do not like to 

 interfere, either from a fear of exposing their want of knowledge 

 to their inferiors in every other respect, probably, than this. I 

 was once much amused by a sailor commencing farming opera- 

 tions, with about as much knowledge of ploughing as his 

 ploughman had of managing a ship ; but having been accustomed 

 to strict obedience from all liands on board, he carried the same 

 peremptory disposition on lard, and any of his workmen sug- 

 gesting anything to be done, were ordered by the captain to do 

 just the contrary, merely by way of maintaining his paramount 

 authority. It may well be supposed that the system pursued 

 by our sea captain for the first five months was anything but 

 agreeable to the rules of good husbandry ; the farm, in fact, was 

 turned nearly topsy-turvy, but being a very shrewd and observ- 

 ing man, he soon saw what was right and what wrong, and 

 trimmed his sails accordingly ; being laughed at by a farmer 

 for such extraordinary proceedings as some of his Avere, he 

 angrily replied, " Do you think I am going to be told by these 

 landlubbers what to do '? my or dersshall be obeyed, whether 

 right or wrong, and now that my hands are quite satisfied on 

 this point, and will do whatever I tell them, I think we shall 

 sail very well together, and right the ship at last." He turned 

 out, afterwards, a capital farmer, and his men were always the 

 most orderly and well-conducted in the parish. 



Every man may, with a very little trouble, acquire the 

 knowledge necessary to manage his horses, his best instructor 

 being common sense; and it would be well for the equine race, 

 were their lords and masters to bestow a little more attention 

 upon them than they usually do. Horses were much more 

 regarded by the heathens of old, whom we think so meanly of, 

 than they are by us Christians of the present day. Laws were 

 made by Constantine to enforce the proper treatment of horses, 

 and punishments inflicted upon those who ill-treated or abused 

 them ; and we read that the old racers, who had distinguished 

 themselves in the circus, were afterwards maintained out of the 

 public treasury ; those pensioners on the public bounty were 

 called " Emeriti," as deserving their discharge from labour, and 

 also support in their declining years. How fare the " Emeriti " of 

 the present day 1 and how few consider the aged and worn-out 

 servant^?, which have contributed so much to their pleasures or 

 their purse ! Instead of protection in their declining years, 

 they are generally made over to the tender mercies of cabmen 



