162 



ON BEAUTY IN 



horse, he would soon mend his looks by having 

 his ugly long tail off. Others remarked, that 

 the horse must be from foreign parts : they 

 could tell it by its tail, for the outlandish people 

 there were but poor hands at setting a horse 

 off to advantage. A third would cry out, 

 with a grin, i6 There goes Long-tail ! " I bore 

 all this with becoming fortitude, till at last, 

 being obliged to ride to Leeds for mass on 

 Sundays, either the servants of the inn, or the 

 hangers-on in the stable-yard, made free with 

 my horse's tail, in order to turn a penny by the 

 hair ; and they shortened it so much, that it 

 neither appeared one thing nor another, and 

 at last I was reduced to the necessity of calling 

 in the aid of the docker to free myself from 

 future annoyance. This happened three and 

 twenty years ago. 



Rational people now-a-days will scarcely 

 believe that near the close of the last century 

 Englishmen considered that the appearance of 

 the horse would be considerably improved by 

 depriving the poor beast of one half of his ears. 

 Yet this was the case ; and it was a common 

 thing to see horses whose mid-parts w r ere 

 beautiful to behold, whilst each extremity pre- 



