nd. We forget that there are
many places where art is older than nature.

We took a long detour through somewhat easier roads, till we came to a
breach or chasm in the valley, from which we saw our friend the White
Horse once more. At least, we thought it was our friend the White Horse;
but after a little inquiry we discovered to our astonishment that it was
another friend and another horse. Along the leaning flanks of the same
fair valley there was (it seemed) another white horse; as rude and as
clean, as ancient and as modern, as the first. This, at least, I thought
must be the aboriginal White Horse of Alfred, which I had always heard
associated with his name. And yet before we had driven into Wantage
and seen King Alfred's quaint grey statue in the sun, we had seen yet a
third white horse. And the third white horse was so hopelessly unlike
a horse that we were sure that it was genuine. The final and original
white horse, the white horse of the White Horse Vale, has that big,
babyish quality that truly belongs to our remotest ancestors. It really
has the prehistoric, preposterous quality of Zulu or New Zealand native
drawings. This at least was surely made by our fathers when they were
barely men; long before they were civilized men.

But why was it made? Why did barbarians take so much trouble to make a
horse nearly as big as a hamlet; a horse who could bear no hunter, who
could drag no load? What was this titanic, sub-conscious instinct for
spoiling a beautiful green slope with a very ugly white quadruped?
What (for the matter of that) is this whole hazardous fancy of humanity
ruling the earth, which may have begun with white horses, which may by
no means end with twenty horse-power cars? As I rolled away out of that
country, I was still cloudily considering how ordinary men ever came to
want to make such strange chalk horses, when my chauffeur startled me by
speaking for the first time for nearly two hours. He suddenly let go one
of the handles and pointed at a gross green bulk of down that happened
to swell above us. "That would be a good place," he said.

Naturally I referred to his last speech of some hours before; and
supposed he meant that it would be promising for agriculture. As a fact,
it was quite unpromising; and this made me suddenly understand the quiet
ardour in his eye. All of a sudden I saw what he really meant. He really
meant that this would be a splendid place to pick out another white
horse. H