On his arriving at Oxford or Cambridge, how often has the undergraduate, for the professed purposes of application and recreation, submitted to his parents or guardians a supplication for those three stereotyped wants of college life, "a little money, a private tutor, and a horse!" Afterwards, in his manhood, and even in his old age, how often has the Prime Minister of England, during a most important debate, risen from his seat in Parliament to propose to the legion of senators around him "that this House shall adjourn from Tuesday to Thursday," for the well known object (acknowledged by "loud and protracted cheering") of enabling himself, those who surround him, and everybody else, "to go to the Derby," to purchase "Dorling's correct card of the names of the HORSES, and the colours of their RIDERS!"
Among our leading statesmen, how many, as patrons of the turf, have purchased for several thousand guineas—a horse! How many, including Pitt, Fox, Lord Althorp, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Sir Francis Burdett, &c., &c., have been ardent followers of hounds!
Her Majesty Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon III. each keep a pack of stag-hounds; the Prince Consort, a pack of harriers. During the Peninsular war, and again while commanding the army of occupation in France, the Duke of Wellington, besides fighting and writing, maintained either a pack of fox-hounds or boar-hounds.[A] George III. was strongly attached to hunting; his great grandson, the Prince of Wales, "loves it better still."
In all our streets, in our fields, in our highways and bye-ways, along the surface of merry England, and across it; under ground in coal-mines; revolving in a mill;—in short, in every direction, and wherever we go, we see before us—sometimes as man's companion, sometimes as his servant, sometimes as his slave, and occasionally as his master—the horse, respecting which and his rider we will now, without further preamble, venture to offer to our readers the few following remarks.
[A] About 44 years ago a Frenchwoman, the proprietor of a small farm, showed us, as a great curiosity, a "billet de logement" which had been inflicted upon her, of which the following is a translated copy:—
"The widow —— will lodge for one night fifty-four dogs." [The Duke of Wellington's hounds just arrived from England.]
(Signed) ——,
"Mayor."
"Imaginez-vous donc," exclaimed the poor old lady, uplifting her eyes and the palms of both hands; "Imaginez-vous donc—cinquante-quatre chiens!!"