ill, he can at least make a needle
without an eye, or a nail without a head, or a knife that won't cut, or
something of that sort, with dexterity. Also, the middle class, or
Smithian lout, at least manages his stockbroking or marketing with
decision and cunning; knows something by eye or touch of his wares, and
something of the characters of the men he has to deal with. But the
Ducal or Marquisian lout has no knowledge of anything under the sun,
except what sort of horse's quarters will carry his own, farther
weighted with that smooth block or pebble of a pow; and no faculty
under the sun of doing anything, except cutting down the trees his
fathers planted for him, and selling the lands his fathers won.

137. That is indeed the final result of hunting and horse-racing on the
British landlord. Of its result on the British soldier, perhaps the
figures of Lord George Sackville at the battle of Minden, and of Lord
Raglan at the battle of Alma, (who in the first part of the battle did
not know where he was, and in the second plumed himself on being where
he had no business to be,) are as illustrative as any I could name; but
the darkest of all, to my own thinking, are the various personages,
civil and military, who have conducted the Caffre war to its last
successes, of blowing women and children to death with dynamite, and
harrying the lands of entirely innocent peasantry, because they would
not betray their defeated king.

138. Of the due and noble relations between man and his companion
creatures, the horse, dog, and falcon, enough has been said in my
former writings--unintelligible enough to a chivalry which passes six
months of its annual life in Rotten Row, and spends the rents of its
Cumberland Hills in building furnaces round Furness Abbey; but which
careful students either of past knighthood, or of future Christianity,
will find securely and always true. For the relations between man and
his beast of burden, whether the burden be himself or his goods, become
beautiful and honorable, just in the degree that both creatures are
useful to the rest of mankind, whether in war or peace. The Greeks gave
the highest symbol of them in the bridling of Pegasus for Bellerophon
by Athena; and from that myth you may go down to modern
times--understanding, according to your own sense and dignity, what all
prophecy, poetry, history, have told you--of the horse whose neck is
clothed with thunder, or the ox who treadeth out the corn-