18 THE HORSE. 



principally, if not only, by the London brewers and distillers, 

 vast, ponderous, slow animals, of enormous powers of draught, 

 but incapable of travelling beyond a foot's pace, lliese huge 

 quadrupeds, four of which being once presented by the East 

 India Company to some native prince, were not inappropriately 

 named by him English elephants, vary from sixteen to nineteen 

 hands in height, and are distinguished by their broad chests, 

 short backs, round barrels, their immense volume of mane, 

 resembling that of a lion, their heavy tails, great hairy fetlocks, 

 and immense, well-formed feet. 



The lighter of these horses, before the days of railroads, were 

 used for teaming, and for carriers' wagon-horses ; and the very 

 lightest in the reign of Queen Anne, for carriage-horses, and 

 even for mounting the heavy cavalry with which Marlborough 

 and Prince Eugene rode over the splendid squadrons of Maison 

 Eoi at Oudenarde and Malplaquet. 



Now, they are restricted entirely to the use whence they 

 derive their name, and are employed only in the metropolis, and 

 there, perhaps, rather as a matter of pomp and class-pride, than 

 of real utility, by the wealthy brewers and distillers, who keep 

 stables full of these great costly beasts, as fat and sleek as brew- 

 ers' grains, hot stabling, and careful grooming will render them, 

 and parade them a few times in every year, glittering in splen- 

 did brass-plated harness, and driven by human bipeds almost as 

 bulky, as useless, and as slow as the animals they conduct. 



These horses are, it is supposed, originally of Flanders 

 descent ; but they have been bred for many centuries in the 

 fens of Lincolnshire, where they reach their highest perfection 

 as to size, and still exist entirely unmixed. The cause of the 

 preservation of this singular race of animals, in a perfectly pure 

 state, seems to be its unfitness, even when crossed with lighter 

 breeds, for any thing but the slowest work, which has long led 

 to its disuse even for farm-work and the heaviest teaming on 

 roads ; carriers' wagons themselves having, long since, passed 

 into abeyance as complete as the pack-horses which they super- 

 seded. 



It is needless to say, that for carriage horses, much less for 

 the mounts of dragoon regiments, no cross, however remote, of 

 these huge, slow-stalking, hairy-hoofed masses of fat and exuberant 



