68 Chapters on Animals. 



had some experience of horses will have known such cases. 

 No form of disappointment is more provoking. The 

 animal, after vice has declared itself, seems exactly the 

 same creature that he did before. Has he not the same 

 Hmbs, shape, colour ? Is not the spot of white upon his 

 forehead precisely in the same place ? Is not his tail of 

 the same length ? Nothing is altered that the eye may 

 detect, but there is the same change that there is in a wine- 

 bottle, when somebody has poured the wine out and re- 

 placed it with deadly poison. In the animal's brain there 

 dwelt a spirit that was your most faithful servant — your 

 most humble and dutiful friend ; that spirit is gone, and 

 instead of it there is a demon who is determined to kill 

 you whenever an opportunity offers. The Teutonic le- 

 gends of black steeds with fiery eyes that were possessed 

 by evil spirits, are no more than the poetical form that 

 clothes an indubitable truth. The nature of the horse is 

 such that he is capable of endless irreconcilable rage, 

 against his master, and against humanity, — a temper of 

 chronic hate and rebellion like that of Milton's fallen 

 angels,, keeping the fierce resolve — 



'' To wage by force or guile eternal war 

 Irreconcilable," 



When you see, however, the thousands upon thousands 

 of horses which do their duty, on the whole safely and 

 well, in the large cities, in the country, in the army, about 

 railway stations, breweries, and business places of all 

 kinds, you will conclude that the horse-demons are rare in 

 proportion ; and, indeed, happily they are so. Most horses 

 are fairly good, and in some races almost all of them are 

 docile. In other races vices of different kinds are very 



