FRENCH HORSES 301 



sociable couples follow suit. The only time I saw a hunt- 

 servant really gallop he did so very much in spite of himself. 

 I suppose the man had got thrown out, and was rejoining 

 us from the rear. The procession was at the time ambling 

 along a narrowish alley, conforming to the painstaking 

 operations of Hannibal and Nicanor on our right flank, when 

 the chestnut horse he was riding took matters into his hands 

 and came through us like a shot out of a bow. Fortunately 

 we were warned of his irresistible approach by the lusty 

 shouts of the rider. We found him at the next carrefour, 

 mopping the honest sweat from his brow, and well satisfied 

 with his adventure. 



An open galloping country makes a fast horse, and a fast 

 horse makes a fast hound. We have only to look at Stubbs's 

 and Wootton'g and Seymour's pictures ^ to see that our fast 

 half-bred horse had at least a century's start of the same 

 animal in France. The fox-hunting gentry, like the Osbaldi- 

 stones in ' Eob Koy,' rode galloping horses long before this 

 class of animal w^as realised in France, which is only quite 

 lately. But the French — witness the cavalry horses I have 

 just been speaking about, and M. Kulb's conspicuous chest- 

 nut — are quickly making up for lost time. 



' I have two or three pictures at Gisburne of members of my family on 

 horseback, coursing and hunting, painted about 1720 or so. The horses are 

 exceedingly well bred and full of character, but narrowish and not up to more 

 than twelve stone. They all show much more Eastern blood in their heads 

 — the bump on the forehead, the full eye, which we only find here and there 

 in an individual now. They were, of course, much nearer the blends of Arab 

 and Arabian blood to which we are indebted for everything we prize most in 

 horseflesh. J. Ward's best horses are quite a different stamp. By that time we 

 had somehow or other got more substance and size into our breed. 



