THE ENGLISH RACE-HORSE. 255 



he performed it in six hours and twenty-one mi- 

 nutes, riding ten horses, and allowing for mounting 

 and dismounting and a moment for refreshment: 

 he rode for six hours at the rate of twenty miles an 

 hour. Mr. Thornton, in 1745, rode from Stilton to 

 London, back, and again to London, making two 

 hundred and fifteen miles, in eleven hours, on the 

 turnpike and uneven ground. Mr. Shafto, in 176*2, 

 with ten horses, and five of them ridden twice, 

 accomplished fifty miles and a quarter in one hour 

 and forty-nine minutes. In 1 763, he won a second 

 match, which was to provide a person to ride one 

 hundred miles a day, on any one horse each day, 

 for twenty-nine days together, and to have any 

 number of horses, not exceeding twenty-nine : he 

 accomplished the task on fourteen horses ; and on 

 one day he rode one hundred and sixty miles, on 

 account of the tiring of his first horse. Mr. Hull's 

 (Dribbler, however, afforded the most extraordinary 

 instance on record of the stoutness as well as speed 

 of the race-horse, when, in December 1786, he ran 

 twenty-three miles round the flat at Newmarket in 

 fiftv-seven minutes and ten seconds. 



Prince Piickler Muskau admits the undeniable 

 superiority of the English horse over the Arab. 

 He had practical opportunity of judging both, as 

 racers and as jumpers over lofty fences ; but he 

 would place high born persons on Arabs alone,* and 

 leave the English blood-horse to jockeys, wisely 



* Turkish bashaws and Persian chiefs being notoriously 

 high-born. 



