youth; ay, even when that simple squire deemed that thy "loveless eye" might gaze unmoved "upon all the mares in the meadows of Cordova." Most patient of sufferers! Most stoical of steeds! Most immortal, incomparable, incontinent Rozinante!
Nor be thou forgotten, whose high privilege it was to bear into a hundred "hair-breadth 'scapes" the weight of that most "valiant bumpkin," hight Hudibras; thou who wert
"Sturdy, large, and tall,
With mouth of meal, and eyes of wall;"
thou of the "strutting ribs" and "draggling tail;" thou who hast in all men's memories a "local habitation" though not a name; and who, nameless as thou art, art yet immortal!
But alas! we are all this while but touching a note to which there is no answering chord—we are telling the tales, and feeling with the feelings, of a bygone age! The spirit of a mighty change is abroad. The men of the time to come, will look back with contempt upon the horse-loving generations of the past—the "cura nitentes pascere equos"— will be a thing unknown to our grandchildren—the "gratia currus" will be confined to the rail-road train and the monster balloon: there cometh fast upon us an age of boiling water and hydrogen gas, before whose dawning beams the Sun of Newmarket, and the Stars of the Four-in-hand Club, must alike "begin to pale their ineffectual fires!" The signs of the times, as an execrable civil [?] engineer had the impertinence to tell us the other morning, appear daily more in-horse-picious, and the position of that animal in society is growing rapidly more un-stable. The last of the race will soon, we fear, be cooped up in a ten-feet square crib in the Zoological Gardens, and we shall be compelled, malgré nous, to travel in the first class.
But "grieving's a folly," as the song says, or at any rate very nearly related to one. A few words more, and we have done. We have kept one of our very particular favourites, as a sort of bonne-bouche, to reward the exemplary patience with which you have suffered us to gabble on so long after our own fashion and liking: and, curiously enough, we have drunk it from the same source which furnished us with a similar peace-offering when we had that long Spring morning gossip about things in general, and puppy dogs in particular, and which you were then pleased, as we recollect, to receive so graciously. You cannot surely have forgotten the dog of Roderick! Of course you have not, and we beg your pardon for even hinting at the possibility. Well then, look here upon another picture from the same master pencil. The battle has been fought and won—the pride of "the lying Ishmaelite" has been signally crushed—the long-forgotten war-cry has been once more heard—the sword of the traitor has "found bloody work" in the grasp of the true man—the good horse has borne his ancient lord to "the last, the happiest of his fields." Spain has been delivered—but where is the deliverer? Has he parted and left no trace? Yes, one; but alas! an unavailing one—
"On the banks
Of Sella was Orelio found; his legs
And flanks incarnadined—his poitrel smear'd
With froth, and foam, and gore—his silver mane
Sprinkled with blood, which hung on every hair
Aspersed like dewdrops:—trembling there he stood
From the toil of battle, and at times sent forth
His tremulous voice, far echoing loud and shrill,
A frequent, anxious cry, with which he seem'd
To call the master whom he loved so well,
And who had thus again forsaken him."
Who shall doubt that he was tended' in accordance with his lord's affectionate injunction,
"As did beseem the steed which had so oft
Carried a king to battle?"
