humour is a source of much entertainment among the young men of the
family: the Oxonian, particularly, takes a mischievous pleasure now and
then in slyly rubbing the old man against the grain, and then smoothing
him down again; for the old fellow is as ready to bristle up his back
as a porcupine. He rides a venerable hunter called Pepper, which is a
counterpart of himself, a heady, cross-grained animal, that frets the
flesh off its bones; bites, kicks, and plays all manner of villanous
tricks. He is as tough, and nearly as old as his rider, who has ridden
him time out of mind, and is, indeed, the only one that can do anything
with him. Sometimes, however, they have a complete quarrel, and a
dispute for mastery, and then, I am told, it is as good as a farce to
see the heat they both get into, and the wrongheaded contest that
ensues; for they are quite knowing in each other's ways and in the art
of teasing and fretting each other. Notwithstanding these doughty
brawls, however, there is nothing that nettles old Christy sooner than
to question the merits of his horse; which he upholds as tenaciously as
a faithful husband will vindicate the virtues of the termagant spouse
that gives him a curtain lecture every night of his life.

The young men call old Christy their "professor of equitation," and in
accounting for the appellation, they let me into some particulars of the
squire's mode of bringing up his children. There is an odd mixture of
eccentricity and good sense in all the opinions of my worthy host. His
mind is like modern Gothic, where plain brick-work is set off with
pointed arches and plain tracery. Though the main groundwork of his
opinions is correct, yet he has a thousand little notions, picked up
from old books, which stand out whimsically on the surface of his mind.

Thus, in educating his boys, he chose Peachum, Markham, and such old
English writers for his manuals. At an early age he took the lads out of