ourage him
to go with softer paces, godward or devilward as it might be, and save
Felicissimus's leather, which is fast wearing. This is what we call a
Government in England, for nearly two centuries now.

I wish Felicissimus were saddle-sick forever and a day! He is a dreadful
object, however much we are used to him. If the horse had not been bred
and broken in, for a thousand years, by real riders and horse-subduers,
perhaps the best and bravest the world ever saw, what would have become
of Felicissimus and him long since? This horse, by second-nature,
religiously respects all fences; gallops, if never so madly, on the
highways alone;--seems to me, of late, like a desperate Sleswick
thunder-horse who had lost his way, galloping in the labyrinthic lanes
of a woody flat country; passionate to reach his goal; unable to reach
it, because in the flat leafy lanes there is no outlook whatever, and
in the bridle there is no guidance whatever. So he gallops stormfully
along, thinking it is forward and forward; and alas, it is only round
and round, out of one old lane into the other;--nay (according to
some) "he mistakes _his own footprints_, which of course grow ever more
numerous, for the sign of a more and more frequented road;" and his
despair is hourly increasing. My impression is, he is certain soon, such
is the growth of his necessity and his despair, to--plunge _across_ the
fence, into an opener survey of the country; and to sweep Felicissimus
off his back, and comb him away very tragically in the process! Poor
Sleswicker, I wish you were better ridden. I perceive it lies in the
Fates you must now either be better ridden, or else not long at all.
This plunging in the heavy labyrinth of over-shaded lanes, with one's
stomach getting empty, one's Ireland falling into cannibalism, and no
vestige of a goal either visible or possible, cannot last.

Colonial Offices, Foreign, Home and other Offices, got together under
these strange circumstances, cannot well be expected to be the best that
human ingenuity could devise; the wonder rather is to see them so good
as they are. Who made them, ask me not. Made they clearly were; for we
see them here in a concrete condition, writing despatches, and drawing
salary with a view to buy pudding. But how those Offices in Downing
Street were made; who made them, or for what kind of objects they were
made, would be hard to say at present. Dim visions and phantasmagories
gathered from the B