•48 THE HORSE. 



who had never before been conquered. Two days afterwards he distanced 

 Mr. Strode's Pensioner, a very good horse ; and, in the August of the same 

 year, he won the great subscription at York. No horse daring to enter 

 against him, he closed his short career of seventeen months, by walking 

 over the Newmarket course for the king's plate, on October the 18th, 1770. 

 He was never beaten, nor ever paid forfeit, and won for his owner more 

 tlian twenty-five thousand pounds. 



Eclipse was afterwards employed as a stallion, and produced the 

 extraordinary number of three livuidred and thirty-four winners, and these 

 netted to their owners more than a hundred and sixty thousand pounds 

 exclusive of plates and cups. This fine animal died in 1789, at the age 

 of twenty-five years *. 



More than twenty years after the Darley Arabian, and when the value 

 of the Arabian blood was fully established. Lord Godolphin possessed a 

 beautiful, but singularly-shaped horse, which he called an Arabian, but 

 which was really a Barb. His crest, lofty and arched almost to a fault, 

 will distinguish him from every other horse. 



It will likewise be seen from our plate (vide p. 9), that he had a 

 sinking behind liis shoulders, almost as peculiar, and a corresponding 

 elevation of the spine towards the loins. His muzzle was uncommonly 

 fine, his head beautifully set on, his shoulders capacious, and his quarters 

 well spread out. He was picked up in France, where he was actually 

 employed in drawing a cart ; and when he was afterwards presented to Lord 

 Godolphin, he was in that nobleman's stud a considerable time before his 

 value was discovered. It was not until the birth of Lath, one of the first 

 horses of that period, that his excellence began to be appreciated. He 

 ■svas then styled an Arabian, and became, in even a greater degree than the 

 Darley, the founder of the modern thorough-bred horses. He died in 

 1753, at the age of twenty-nine. 



An intimate friendship subsisted between him and a cat, which either sat 

 on his back when he was in the stable, or nestled as closely to him as she 

 could. At his death, the cat refused her food, and pined away, and soon 

 died. — Mr. Holcroft gives a similar relation of the attachment between a 

 race-horse and a cat, which the courser would take in his mouth and place 

 in his manger and upon his back v/ithout hurting her. Chillaby, called 

 from his great ferocity the Mad Arabian, whom one only of the grooms 

 dared to approach, and who savagely tore to pieces the image of a man 

 that was purposely placed in his way, had his peculiar attachment to a 

 lamb, who used to employ himself for many an hour, in butting away the 

 flies from him. 



Another foreign horse, whose portrait we have given {vide p. 11), was 

 the Welleslev Arabian; the very picture of a beautiful wild horse of 

 the desert. His precise country was never determined. He is evidently 

 neither a perfect Barb, nor a perfect Arabian, but from some neighbouring 

 province, where both the Barb and Arabian would expand to a more per- 

 fect fulness of form. This horse has been erroneously selected as the pat- 

 tern of a superior Arabian, and therefore we have introduced him ; few, how^- 

 ever, of his produce were trained who can add much to his reputation. 



It has been imagined tliat the breed of racing horses has lately very 

 considerably degenerated. This is not the case. Thorough-bred horses 



* The produce of Kino; Herod, a descendant of Flying Childers, was even more 

 numerous. He got no less than four hundred and ninety-seven winners, who gained for 

 their proprietors upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. Highflyer was a son of King 

 Herod. 



