Your horse as pleased as yourself

Your horse as pleased as yourself

Your horse as pleased as yourself

The morning ride, slowly pacing, full of expectation, your horse as pleased as yourself; sharp and clear in the gray atmosphere the leafless trees and white farmhouses stand out, backed by a curtain of mist hanging on the hills in the horizon. With eager eyes you take all in; nothing escapes you; you have cast off care for the day. How pleasant and cheerful everything and everyone looks! Even the cocks and hens, scratching by the road-side, have a friendly air. The turnpike-man relaxes, in favour of your ‘pink,’ his usual grimness. A tramping woman, with one child at her back and two running beside her, asks charity; you suspect she is an impostor, but she looks cold and pitiful; you give her a shilling, and the next day you don’t regret your foolish benevolence. To your mind the well-cultivated land looks beautiful. In the monotony of ten acres of turnips, you see a hundred pictures of English farming life, well-fed cattle, good wheat crops, and a little barley for beer. Not less beautiful is the wild gorse-covered moor never to be reclaimed, I hope where the wiry, white-headed, bright-eyed huntsman sits motionless on his old white horse, surrounded by the pied pack a study for Landseer.

But if the morning ride creates unexecuted cabinet pictures and unwritten sonnets, how delightful ‘the find,’ ‘the run’ along brook-intersected vales, up steep hills, through woodlands, parks, and villages, showing you in byways little gothic churches, ivy-covered cottages, and nooks of beauty you never dreamed of, alive with startled cattle and hilarious rustics.