22 THE HORSE. 



cattle. With youi permission then, kind reader, to use an expression familiar to ht 

 votaries of the chase, let us " try back." 



While the government of one nrni would be a dangerous experiment until we can 

 have "Angels in the shape of men to govern us," yet when the monarch happens to 

 be enlightened and virtuous, then the more absolute his power the belter, perhaps, foi 

 his country Even bad ones, sometimes by freak or passion, confer great good on 

 particular interests or branches of industry. We have already seen how, under the 

 reign of William the Conqueror, the munificence of a subject gained him renown as? a 

 patriot by the introduction of Spanish horses into England. Subsequently, King John 

 with all his bad qualities, established for himself at least one claim to honourable 

 notoriety, by his various measures to better the strain of horses in use at that time, and 

 especially by the introduction of the Flanders Horse, to give more weight and sub- 

 stance to the heavy coach-horse, needed for, and adapted to the unwieldy carriages and 

 bad roads then in use. " To this monarch too," says an English writer, " we are 

 unquestionably indebted for the foundation of our unrivalled draught horses. Aware 

 of the superiority in bulk and strength of the Flemish breed, he imported, at one time, 

 an hundred of the finest stallions." Subsequently, Edward II. imported thirty war, 

 and twelve heavy draught horses, from Lombardy ; and these again were well crossed 

 at a later period, when Edward III. of warlike temper, brought over fifty Spanish 

 horses, at a cost of thirteen pounds six shillings, equivalent, in our day of luxury and 

 paper money, to $800 each. It is fairly to be presumed, that in his great passion foi 

 the chase, His Royal Majesty perceived the necessity of giving more speed to the 

 hunter, by throwing off some of the sluggish blood and massiveness of the Flemish 

 stock, which is in general " large in the carcass, pretty clean in the leg, and patient 

 and enduring, but slow. They are good at a dead pull, but very heavy in the fore- 

 hand ; inclined to get fat, but wanting in activity. They fall off in the rump, and the 

 hips stand out too much from the ribs. The most unsightly part is the setting-on of 

 the tail, which comes out low and points downwards." Such are the general cha?oc- 

 teristics of the Flemish horse. " Flanders Mare," as every one knows, is a common 

 term to express the opposite of grace and delicacy. They were imported into Eng- 

 land, as above stated, to give size to coach-horses, when roads were bad and coaches 

 of enormous weight; but, as cause and effect are connected, and the one infallibly fol- 

 lows and is controlled by the other, coaches have become lighter, and coach-horses 

 quicker and more airy, as roads have been improved. The policy of this change from 

 heavy to lighter horses, however, was again necessarily restrained and limited by the 

 then still existing necessity for having chargers of great stamina to carry, besides 

 their rider, the heavy armour weighing over three hundred pounds, as did that in com 

 naon use before the invention of gunpowder ! 



How often public policy, the exterior relations of a country, and various accident* 

 and events apparently altogether extrinsic, serve to establish historical facts, and to 

 influence the courses of national industry, literature, and arts ! Thus, the representa- 

 tion of a man driving a horse attached to a harrow, woven in a piece of tapestry, is 

 the evidence relied upon to prove that about contemporaneously with the Norman con- 

 quest, horses had got to be employed in that sort of labour ; and here again we see, at 

 a subsequent period, a revolution in the whole system of breeding horses in Britain, 

 brought about by the invention of gunpowder ! While in our own day, we have beheld 

 steam so applied as to drive horse-power from all her great thoroughfares, and to do 

 in her factories the labour of some millions of men ! Truly, these are the days of 

 progress ! 



We come now to the period when horses were first distinctly classified and disci 

 plined expressly for war, and the turf, the chase, the road, and the coach ; and here we 

 may safely leave the subject as far as relates to the introduction of foreign horses into 

 England, for the most part judicious, and well calculated, as the reader must have per- 

 ceived, to pave the way for what has since been accomplished in the melioration of 

 this favourite animal, and in adapting his structure and properties, from time to time, 

 to his new and more various employments, Some particular enactments, however 

 designed to accomplish the same objects, are well worthy of being mentioned ; and, it 

 might be added, of being imitated in our own country and time. In the reign of 

 Henry VJ1L, even the size and form of Stallions were prescribed by Statute; and 



