76 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



as "true to the life;" and nothing could supply this 

 lack but to find a portrait of the same horse, painted by another 

 artist, and then if the two agreed, the proof would be fully satis- 

 fying to the understanding. A little over a hundred years ago 

 Lord Francis Godolphin Osborne, Duke of Leeds, and heir to 

 Lord Godolphin, wrote Sir Charles Bunbury, a great race-horse 

 man, that he had a painting of Godolphin Arabian, by Wootton, 

 at Gog Magog Hills. Over sixty years ago an American gentle- 

 man wrote to Mr. Skinner's magazine that he had seen a paint- 

 ing of Godolphin Arabian banging in Houghton Hall, Norfolk. 

 In 1878 my physician told me I must quit work for awhile, and 

 that I had better visit the great Exposition at Paris that year. I 

 was anxious to see the Fair, but I was a great deal more anxious 

 to see those two paintings of Godolphin Arabian, if they were 

 still in existence. Gog Magog Hills is a quaint old place, and the 

 origin and meaning of its name is lost in a very remote antiquity. 

 As it has not been the residence of its owners for more than a 

 hundred years, it is much neglected. The people in charge were 

 very obliging, and I was immediately admitted to the view of 

 Wootton's painting of Godolphin Arabian. The first glance was 

 a complete vindication of the truthfulness of the Maryland paint- 

 ing as a true likeness in every important feature of the outline 

 and proportions. The canvas is about four and a half by four 

 feet, inclosed in a massive frame. After studying it and com- 

 paring it, point by point for more than an hour, with a copy of 

 the Maryland painting, it became evident they were not painted 

 by the same hand, although the horse had the same position in 

 both pictures, with the exception that the right hind foot was 

 thrown backward in the Wootton painting instead of forward, 

 and thus gave a less abrupt droop of the rump. The head was 

 precisely the same shape, but in the large painting the articula- 

 tions were less distinct and expressive. 



After a little peregrination through Norfolk, studying the 

 "Norfolk Trotter" as then called, but since called "Hackney," 

 on his "native heath," I reached Houghton Hall, in Norfolk. 

 This grand old place was built over a hundred and sixty years 

 ago by the famous Sir Eobert Walpole, and at that time it was 

 considered the most splendid structure, as a gentleman's country 

 seat, in all England. For many years it has been the property 

 of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, but is not often occupied as a 

 residence. Here too, I was lucky, for upon my entrance to th& 



