I was now a free man, and after a trip of a month in France I sold my London house, took possession of Batsford and made up my mind to become a country squire. I was made a magistrate and a Deputy Lieutenant, attended Petty and Quarter Sessions and interested myself in agricultural matters. In short, I tried to learn my business. I did not go about, as one of my neighbours did, with a sample of wheat in my breeches pocket; but landlording having become at that moment a poor trade, fast travelling on its way to that bottom which it touched a year or two later, and from which it has now mercifully in a great measure recovered, I was anxious to see whether something could not be done to relieve the distress under which the farmers with wheat at less than twenty shillings a quarter were suffering. One afternoon I met one of my tenants, a most capable man for whom I soon grew to entertain a great respect, and joining company with him began to talk over matters. He suggested to me that nothing would be of such benefit to the farmers in the neighbourhood as having a high class, sound shire stallion. He said, and indeed I had myself noticed, that there was not a decent cart-horse in the whole country-side. The land, he pointed out, was excellently adapted for horse-breeding, good pasture, with plenty of lime in the water to make bone, and he felt certain that within a few years a good trade in cart-horses might be got up. I jumped at the idea. I had always been a great admirer of a good cart-horse, my fancy being largely stimulated by the dash and vigour of Rosa Bonheur’s “Horse Fair,” which, if it does not satisfy the judges of horses in all respects, has yet the living spark of genius which belongs to a fine poem; her famous roan horse must have been inspired by the noble description in the Book of Job, which is far more a prophecy of the shire, pawing in the valley and rejoicing in his strength, than of the lordly thoroughbred. It was such horses as these that carried the mailed knights—Richard Cœur de Lion and Front de Bœuf—into the lists of chivalry at Ashby-de-la-Zouch—horses bred by the union of the old “great horse” of Britain with the mares of Flanders. That great horse had qualities which attracted the notice of Julius Cæsar. It astonished him to see a horse strong enough, when forced back upon his haunches, to hold up a war chariot going down hill; and when we think of what a clumsy affair a war chariot must have been, carrying besides the charioteer at least one heavily armed man, perhaps more, we cease to wonder at Cæsar’s admiration of an animal that was new to him.