OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH HORSES. 
517 
from the sort of domestic treatment they receive in the first year, 
when they are petted, as it were, by their owners ; but chiefly to 
their being naturally better tempered than our horses are. In some 
of my descriptions of journeys taken in French diligences, I 
have related extraordinary instances of the docility of their horses, 
and I saw a striking one last month, when on my road to Chantilly 
races. Looking out of the window of the coupe, just as the morn- 
ing dawned, I found we were descending a long and somewhat 
steep hill without the wheel horses’ heads being coupled together, 
the driver having omitted to couple them. With English horses, 
an accident must have happened; but the two fine-tempered, 
white stallions spread themselves out, of their own accord, to the 
extreme length of the pole chains, at the encouraging voice of 
their driver, who kept crying out, “Wo !” and all at last was right. 
I had an instance of this property, a short time back, in a four-year 
old French horse of my own. Having had him since he was two years 
old, I can answer for his never having had a collar over his head ; 
but, convinced of his docility, the first time I put him in sin- 
gle harness (about a month back) I put three small children 
into the carriage, and safe enough they were ; for in half an hour 
he appeared to be quite at home. Then the durableness or stout- 
ness of French horses is not less extraordinary. You will see a 
pair of miserable looking animals leave Calais in a hired barouche 
or coach, and none of the lightest of its sort, in the morning, 
with six persons inside, and a lot of luggage on the roof, and 
return to Calais in the evening, after having deposited their load in 
the town of Boulogne, Dunkirk, or St. Omer, making a good fifty - 
miles of ground ; and they will do this three or four times in the 
week. Indeed, there is a heavy coach running from Calais to 
Boulogne (not the Telegraph) which is drawn by only three horses, 
who go the entire distance, twenty-four miles of very heavy road. 
This, I confess, puzzles me ; and although unwilling to draw a com- 
parison unfavourable to my own country, I doubt whether English 
horses in their low condition, and on their food, would be found 
to do this, and stand the work long enough to remunerate their 
owners. I can only account for French horses doing it by the fact 
of their combining strength with action, to a superior degree to 
those of the lower breeds of English ones. Where, indeed, in 
England will you see what is every day seen here — a man take 
a powerful horse out of a cart, and gallop him along the road at 
the rate of twelve or fourteen miles in the hour ? This description 
of horse, the light cart horse — light, yet very strong ; on very 
short legs, and not more than fifteen hands in height — is far su- 
perior to any thing we have in England for such purposes as those 
for which he is used. Look, for example, at the horses which 
VOL. XII. 3 Y 
