They may well be older than British, older than any recorded times.
They may go back, for all we know, to the first faint seeds
of human life on this planet. Men may have picked a horse
out of the grass long before they scratched a horse on a vase
or pot, or messed and massed any horse out of clay. This may
be the oldest human art--before building or graving. And if
so, it may have first happened in another geological age, before
the sea burst through the narrow Straits of Dover. The White
Horse may have begun in Berkshire when there were no white
horses at Folkestone or Newhaven. That rude but evident white
outline that I saw across the valley may have been begun when Britain
was not an island. 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.
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