There is music, again, if you will listen, in the soft tread of these
hundred horse-hoofs upon the spongy vegetable soil. They are
trotting now in 'common time.' You may hear the whole Croats' March
(the finest trotting march in the world) played by those iron heels;
the time, as it does in the Croats' March, breaking now and then,
plunging, jingling, struggling through heavy ground, bursting for a
moment into a jubilant canter as it reaches a sound spot.
The hounds feather a moment round Malepartus, puzzled by the windings
of Reinecke's footsteps. You can hear the flap and snort of the
dogs' nostrils as they canter round; and one likes it. It is
exciting: but why--who can tell?
What beautiful creatures they are, too! Next to a Greek statue (I
mean a real old Greek one; for I am a thoroughly anti-preraphaelite
benighted pagan heathen in taste, and intend some day to get up a
Cinque-Cento Club, for the total abolition of Gothic art)--next to a
Greek statue, I say, I know few such combinations of grace and
strength as in a fine foxhound.
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