64 Chapters on Animals. 



service ; when he has borne you majestically on some 

 occasion of state, or enabled you to display the grace, and 

 skill, and the manly beauty of your person, before the 

 admiring eyes of ladies, you are proud of him as a statue, 

 if it could feel, would be proud of the magnificence of its 

 pedestal. The saddle is a sort of throne for man : when 

 seated there, he has under him the noblest of all the brutes, 

 so that he may be said to sit enthroned above the whole 

 animal creation. It is from a feeling of the royalty of that 

 position, that kings, if they are good riders, always prefer 

 to enter a city on horseback, when a great effect is to be 

 produced upon the minds of the people, well knowing that 

 a leathern saddle, simple and hard as it is, has more of 

 royal dignity than the silken cushions of the gilded coach 

 of state. An incident occurred lately on the entry of King 

 Amadeus into Lerida, which showed him, as by an acted 

 simile, in the character of a sovereign whose throne is not 

 stable, yet whose hand is firm. A shower of flowers rained 

 from a triumphal arch as the Savoyard king rode under it, 

 and his charger plunged so violently that no one but a 

 thorough horseman could have kept his place. All the 

 peoples of the earth like their kings to be fine horsemen, 

 and the crowd thought that in his tossing saddle Amadeus 

 came royally into Lerida ! 



Our pride in horses, our admiration of their beauty and 

 their strength, produce in us a certain feeling of attach- 

 ment to them, but rarely a deep affection. The trouble of 

 attending to the wants of horses, of grooming and feeding 

 them at stated times, can rarely be undertaken by the 

 owner himself, and would be a perpetual annoyance to 

 him unless he had a most exceptional liking for the ani- 

 mal, so as to be always happy when about the stable. . . . 

 It is a trouble to most men to be even obliged to exercise 



