"
In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness
which offered play to the imagination. Costume, at a glance,
gave him a thrilling association with horses (enough to specify
the hat-brim which took the slightest upward angle just to escape
the suspicion of bending downwards), and nature had given him
a face which by dint of Mongolian eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin
seeming to follow his hat-brim in a moderate inclination upwards,
gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile,
of all expressions the most tyrannous over a susceptible mind,
and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to create the
reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund of humor--
too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable crust,--
and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate
enough to know it, would be _the_ thing and no other. It is
a physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been
more powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses.
Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock,
turned sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the
space of three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle,
and remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical
than it had been.
The part thus played in dialogue by Mr.
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