There can hardly be a doubt that our English friend in his “Travels Through the States” noted and wrote down just what he thought he saw, and when he saw anything that he never had seen in England, he was ready to either deny its existence altogether or to insist that there was some mistake about it. Poor man, he could not understand how there could be anything outside of England that could not be found in England. His vision, mental and physical, seems to have been restricted to the shores of his own island home, and he was probably a descendant of a very good man we once heard of. As you sail up the Firth of Clyde you pass an island of three or four miles in extent, called Cumbrae. At the head of ecclesiastical affairs in the island was a very pious man, some generations back, and every Sunday morning he prayed that the Lord would bless the “kingdom of Cumbrae and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland.” The author of “Travels Through the States” was evidently one of the very numerous descendants of this good man, as they are scattered all over England, and as I am a strong believer in the laws of heredity, I can hardly avoid this conclusion. Indeed, some of the numerous tribe, tracing their genealogy through many generations back to “The kingdom of Cumbrae,” have found their way across the water, and at another place I will pay my respects to them. But to return to our traveler: there can be no doubt about his never having seen a pacer in England, for the last one had disappeared before his day, unless an occasional one might have been found in the old province of Galloway, in the southern part of Scotland. If he had known the history of the horses of his own country he would have known that from the time of King John down to that of James I., the pacer was the most popular and fashionable horse in England, and that the nobility and gentry used no other kind for the saddle. He was always of “a mean stature,” but he was compact, hardy and strong, and could carry his burden a long journey in a day with great ease and comfort to his rider. In the reign of Elizabeth, he was kept separate from others, and bred as a breed on account of his easy, gliding motion, which he transmitted to his progeny. At the time of the plantation of the English colonies in this country the pacers were very numerous, and as they were just the type of horse suited to wilderness life, a very large proportion of those selected were pacers. The pacers our traveler saw in Virginia were the lineal descendants of the original English stock brought over by the adventurers, and the awkward riding charged upon the Virginians, with some evident exaggerations, was wisely and sensibly adapted to the action of the horses they were riding. The criticism of the long stirrups is wholly unjust, as they are just the right length for the “military” seat, and nobody in this country when mounted on a _real saddle horse_ would ever think of taking any other.