Coke, the state is obliged
to undertake what would be much better effected by the energy of
individuals.--A Norman horse is an excellent draft horse: he is strong,
bony, and well proportioned. But the natives are not content with this
qualified praise: they contend that he is equally unrivalled as a
saddle-horse, as a hunter, and as a charger. In this part of the country
the present average price of a hussar's horse is nineteen pounds; of a
dragoon's thirty-four pounds; and of an officer's eighty pounds.--These
prices are considered high, but not extravagant. France abounds at this
time in fine horses. The losses occasioned by the revolutionary wars,
and more especially by the disastrous Russian campaign, have been more
than compensated by five years of peace, and by the horses that were
left by the allied troops. An annual supply is also drawn from
Mecklenburg and the adjacent countries. Importations of this kind are
regarded as indispensable, to prevent a degeneration in the stock. A
Frenchman can scarcely be brought to believe it possible; that we in
England can preserve our fine breed of horses without having recourse to
similar expedients; and if at last, by dint of repeated asseverations,
you succeed in obtaining a reluctant assent, the conversation is almost
sure to end in a shrug of the shoulders, accompanied with the
remark--"Ah, vous autres Anglais, vous voulez toujours voler de vos
propres ailes.
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