their mother's hands, who was disposed, as mothers are apt to be, to
make fine orderly children of them, that should keep out of sun and
rain, and never soil their hands, nor tear their clothes.

In place of this, the squire turned them loose, to run free and wild
about the park, without heeding wind or weather. He was also
particularly attentive in making them bold and expert horsemen; and
these were the days when old Christy, the huntsman, enjoyed great
importance, as the lads were put under his care to practise them at the
leaping-bars, and to keep an eye upon them in the chase.

The squire always objected to their using carriages of any kind, and is
still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against the
universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe to that
effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of
solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the
flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself
from wind and weather: our great delight was to out-brave the blustering
boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars
and Bellona into the field was our sport and pastime; coaches and
caroches we left unto them for whom they were first invented, for ladies
and gentlemen, and decrepit age and impotent people."

The squire insists that the English gentlemen have lost much of their
hardiness and manhood since the introduction of carriages. "Compare," he
will say, "the fine gentleman of former times, ever on horseback, booted
and spurred, and travel-stained, but open, frank, manly, and chivalrous,
with the fine gentleman of the present day, full of affectation and
effeminacy, rolling along a turnpike in his voluptuous vehicle. The
young men of those days were rendered brave, and lofty, and generous,