128 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



noble horses to call them of vulgar or basely-tainted 

 blood. They were kings and queens in that order of 

 life to which they belonged, and proved their royal 

 qualities on many a contested field when the lookers-on 

 stood breathless. I object, both on the ground of senti- 

 ment and proper classification, to such a definition of 

 thorough-bred, that, in order to be just to the one class 

 of horses, one must be unjust to the other. Where 

 they are equal in performance, they should be equal in 

 honor. Who shall say that Old Topgallant, when he 

 went against Whalebone four-mile heats, and trotted 

 them in 11.16, 11.06, 11.17, and 12.15, —that is, 

 making his sixteen miles in forty-five minutes and forty- 

 four seconds, which is just 2. 52 J to the mile, and that, 

 too, when he was twenty -two years of age, — is not 

 worthy to stand beside Eclipse, or Henry, or any other 

 horse that ever ran a race ? There is a right and a 

 wrong to this thing ; and, for one, I assert that the 

 nomenclature is faulty, and the classification vicious, 

 which covers Longfellow and Harry Bassett with laurel, 

 and leaves Dexter and Goldsmith's Maid without a 

 spray. There are, therefore, as I understand the merits 

 of the case, tivo great families of thorough-bred horses, 

 instead of one^ in this country. The one is the thorough- 

 bred running-horse : the other is the thorough-bred 

 trotting-horse. The time has come for horsemen to 

 understand this, and no longer be fettered by a 

 classification applicable only to a country where the 

 trotting-horse is not known or honored. The English 



