OF FARRIERY. 



401 



ment upon, when they determined Mr. Stubbs 

 the highest honour they had to confer, and 

 dispatched their diploma to acquaint him of 

 their choice ; but on Stubbs's refusing to pre- 

 sent the picture to the Academy, which is 

 the custom, the Council ever after neglected 

 to invite him to their sittings, and at last be- 

 came so fastidious as not to acknowledge him 

 to be their member. 



Mr. Stubbs offered to give them another 

 picture, but this was rejected ; and having 

 sold this picture to his patron, the Earl of 

 Orosvenor, for one hundred and seventy gui- 

 neas, ii was impossible for him to make the 

 ofFermg required. 



Mr. Stubbs, however, knew how to appre- 

 ciate his own consequence, and thinking less 

 of the honour than the sacrifice, and possess- 

 ing the manly spirit of his predecessor Sey- 

 mour, never after thought of the chair of 

 Appelles. 



We can not conclude this account of our 

 artLst and his labours, without taking notice 

 of a trait in his character most worthy to be 

 imitated. Mr, Stubbs was in himself the 

 most abstemious person of his day, wisely 

 thinking, that the vvay to protract life was to 

 avoid excesses of every description, and by 

 keeping this sentiment in full practice, he 

 appeared as strong and as florid at ninety 

 years of age, as most healthful men do at 

 fifty ; and so fully persuaded was Stubbs of 

 the possibility to prolong his own existence to 

 the patriarchal age of one hundred and fifty, 

 that he most cheerfully began his Compavative 

 Anatomy, after the plan of Professor Blumen- 

 bacR, at the period of ninety, promising a 

 complete classification of the animal world, 

 as an addittlon to an undertaking so labo- 

 rious ; a work that would require at least 



thirty years of good health and perfect memory 

 to accomplish. But, alas ! in the two ea^-er 

 pursuit of this speculation, poor Stubbs was 

 arrested before he could attain his hundredth 

 year, by the hand of him who sports with 

 princes, and whom the mightiest men of the 

 earth can not resist with impunitv. 



After his usual early morning's walk, Mr. 

 Stubbs, as was his constant custom, took some 

 simple refreshment, and then mounting his 

 chamber to prepare for his easel, he felt a 

 sudden sensation come over him, and throvyin"- 

 himself back in his great arm-chair, without 

 uttering a sigh, his spirit slipped from its case 

 of life. Thus, like a full-ripe acorn from its 

 shell, dropped to earth one of the brightest 

 and most industrious men of genius that evei 

 graced our country ; a cheeruil companion, a 

 fast friend, liberal without ostentation, yet 

 prudent without meanness. 



LADY BIRD. 



Lady Bird is a roan pony, got by Tom 

 Thumb (by Walton), and is supposed to be 

 one of the fastest ponies in all her paces in 

 England. She is highly valued by her owner. 

 Indeed Captain Becher speaks in the highest 

 terms of her performances. He says, " she 

 has trotted one match, which is rather ex- 

 traordinary for her size, fourteen miles under 

 the hour, carrying fourteen stone, which she 

 performed with ease, for fifty pounds. I have 

 repeatedly ridden and driven her sixty, seventy, 

 and eighty miles in the day, from one race to 

 another, during four summers, and never had 

 her tire in my life ; and I will defy any man 

 to drive her less than ten miles an. hour iu 

 harness whilst going : and she is well known 

 to all sporting people, who have seen her do 

 extraordinary distances." 



