190 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



if kept to themselves, will in a very short time be- 

 come high on the leg and light of bone, and con- 

 sequently equally unfitted to draw the weight of a 

 big barouche or a state coach." What is wanted, he 

 goes on to say, is "the big harness horse, standing 

 from 16 hands to 16.2 in height, with the bone and 

 shortness of leg, the depth and grandeur of frame, 

 which are in the Cleveland, and are not in the York- 

 shire coach horse ; with the quality, elegance, and 

 action which are in the Yorkshire coach horse, and 

 not in the Cleveland ; and with the ' long, elegant 

 top line,' which is only produced by a combination of 

 both." 



Both the Cleveland bays and the Yorkshire coach 

 horses are moderately high steppers, and usually 

 incapable of a really fast trot. 



A third family of carriage horses is that of the 

 hackneys, whose stud-book, like the others just men- 

 tioned, is a very modern one, dating from 1882. Their 

 origin is remotely the same as that of the Cleveland 

 bays and the Yorkshire coach horses, — a mixture 

 of thoroughbred and cart horse; but in the hackney 

 family there is an intermediate strain, namely, that 

 of the old Xorfolk trotter, a fast-trotting, plain, ser- 

 viceable, moderate-sized beast, that had a great repu- 

 tation in his da} T , and from which, in part, many of 

 our own trotters are descended. The best hackneys 

 now extant trace back almost invariably to one partic- 

 ular horse, called Marshland Shales, who was foaled 

 in 1802. He stood 14.3, was of a dun color, and is 

 said to have descended from the great race horse 

 Eclipse. George Borrow, in a passage of " Lavengro," 

 which I venture to quote here, although it is a familiar 



