FAST COACHING. 417 



determined, I shall endeavor to show, that as a part-bred horse 

 is the best general hunter, so is he, in a greater or less degree, 

 according to the greater or less proportions of pure with cold 

 blood, the best for all kinds of work, unless it be lor draught of 

 enormous burdens at a foot's pace. In the old days of English 

 coaching, before the provinces of England were intersected by a 

 network of iron rails, and hissing locomotives whirled their pas- 

 sengers from Land's End to John o' Groat's, measuring their 

 miles by minutes, speed was a desideratum in coaches ; and, as 

 coaches were then drawn by horses only, it was not wholly 

 useless in a horse. 



In those days, the speed of the crack coaches, such as on the 

 short roads, the Cambridge Star and Fly, the Brighton Age, the 

 Portsmouth Telegraph, and on the long roads, the Leeds Kock- 

 ingham and York Highflyer, canying twelve outside and four 

 inside passengers, in addition to the guard and coachman, and 

 from half a ton to a ton and a half of baggage, was about fifteen 

 miles, or from that to seventeen miles, an hour. I have repeat- 

 edly travelled on either of the two Cambridge coaches, the 

 whole distance to London — fifty- two miles — within three hours, 

 including stoppages ; and I once travelled on the Leeds Kock- 

 ingham, when that coach and the York Highflyer were running 

 opposition, from that city to London — two hundred and one 

 miles — in thirteen hours and thirty-five minutes, including all 

 stoppages, part of the journey being night work. 



Now, what were the horses by which these feats were ac- 

 complished, each team doing its distance, varying from six to 

 nine miles, up the road and back, once each day, Sundays ex- 

 cepted, unless in the case of accident, or unusually severe and 

 heavy roads ? 



The question is answered in a moment. Four-fifths of all 

 the teams were broken-down thoroughbreds, and the remaining 

 one-fifth nearly pure-blooded hunters — all of them horses which 

 had either gone slightly amiss, so as to be thrown out of their 

 original employment, or had, in the first instance, been unfit, 

 owing to want of speed or some unsoundness of wind or limb, 

 for the course or the field. Nothing but these could have done 

 it, once. The pace would have killed them the first day ; or if 

 it had not done so, they could not have come again in a week. 

 Vol. I.— 27 



