8o Chapters on Animals. 



surprising skill. Much may be said in favour of their 

 amusement, which has a fine excitement of its own. A 

 rider commands only one horse, a driver may hold four in 

 his hand at once ; a rider hears no sound but that of hoofs, 

 the driver hears also the lively rumble of the wheels, and 

 feels the pleasant springing and swinging of the well-built 

 vehicle under him. The rider serves no one but himself, 

 the driver has an agreeable sense of importance when the 

 drag is crowded with fair passengers for whose safety he 

 feels himself responsible. Our modern usages, which pro- 

 hibit splendid saddlery to civilians and have made all orna- 

 mentation of it inconsistent with good taste, still allow 

 some splendour in carriage-harness, silver crests and 

 buckles, and other things not absolutely necessary, and in 

 the carriages themselves there are displays of wealth and 

 luxury which could never be concentrated in a saddle. 

 When a rich man has a taste for ostentation, he gratifies 

 it more easily in carriages than in saddle-horses. When a 

 poor man has five children and one horse, the beast cannot 

 carry the whole family on his back, but he can easily drag 

 it behind him in a four-wheeled conveyance. Even a 

 bachelor who keeps only one horse has cogent reasons for 

 preferring harness. A saddle-horse can carry his own 

 person, but his owner cannot take a servant with him nor 

 offer a place to a friend. All the reasons of convenience 

 (the most powerful of all reasons in the long run) are on 

 the side of harness in every country where the roads are 

 good. There are parts of France where it is already 

 thought an eccentricity to ride on horseback, and where 

 equestrians are so rare that if ever one makes his appear- 

 ance the children stare and laugh, and the grown-up 

 people smile, as they would at a man on stilts. In neigh- 



(/r^^, coach. 



