THE HORSE. 59 



Much useful information on this subject may be 

 found in a work by Mr. Roberts, entitled " The 

 Veterinarian." 



THE COACH-HORSE. 



The coach-horse has improved with the refine- 

 ment of the times. He is not now the same vulgar 

 animal he was wont to be in by-gone days. He has 

 cast off his old-fashioned, stiff-looking coat, and 

 mounted one of modern gentility. Formerly he was 

 one of the most clumsy, unmannerly, ill-begotten, 

 misshapen animals in the world ; and just as well 

 qualified to be harnessed to a dray as to a chariot. 



We shall here take leave to borrow a few passages 

 from old writers, and others, in relation to this topic. 



Wheel-carriages, or whirlicotes, as they were then 

 called, came first into use so long back as the reign 

 of Richard II., about the year 1381. We are told 

 by Stowe, that " Richard II., being threatened by 

 the rebels of Kent, rode from the Tower of London 

 to the Mile's-end, and with him his mother, because 

 she was sick and weak, in a whirlicote ;^^ which con- 

 sisted of merely four boards put together in the 

 rudest manner. Side-saddles afterwards became the 

 fashion, until the time of Elizabeth, when coaches 

 were first used. Recumng again to old Stowe, he 

 says, in his Survey of London and Westminster, 

 *' Divers great ladies made them coaches, and rode 

 in them up and down the countries to the great 

 admiration of all beholders;" adding, with a quaint- 

 ness peculiar to the times, " the world runs on wheels 

 with many whose parents were glad to go on foot." 



The clumsiness of the horses, and the cumbrous- 

 ness of the vehicles, rendered this mode of travel- 

 ling, for a long period, any thing but speedy or 

 pleasant. On the demise of George 11., the Duke 

 of Devonshire, the Lord Chamberlain, arrived in 



