OI>D ENGLISH HORSES. 43 



creditable, to my mind, of any in the whole history of England, 

 all that there was of education, of grace, or of refinement, was 

 crowded into the metropolis, mixed even there with inconceiv- 

 able coarseness, inconceivable corruption ; while the whole 

 gentry, and, with a few rare exceptions, even the clergy of the 

 rural districts, were steeped in ignorance, imbrued with brutal 

 debauchery, and marked by a coarseness of manner and lan- 

 guage — even in the presence of their women — that has no 

 parallel at the present day, in the wildest frontier taverns of 

 the farthest South-west, in the rudest camp of California or Aus- 

 tralia, in short, any where among civilized men, unless it be at 

 a wake or di pattern in Gal way or Tipperary, if the performer at 

 those celebrations can be called civilized. 



In one word, I believe that there is exactly the same degree 

 of comparison between the English or American country gentle- 

 men of the present day, and the English squire of those dark 

 ages, that there is between the English and American hunter, 

 roadster, trotter, carriage-horse, and cart-horse, of the latter half 

 of the nineteenth century, and the corresponding animal of the 

 first half of the eighteenth ; and that there is just as much sense 

 in howling over the decline of the horses of that age, or pretend- 

 ing to desire their reproduction, as there would be in aflPecting 

 to desire to introduce the Squire Westerns, the Bumper Squire 

 Joneses, and the parson TruUibers of 1757, in place of the edu- 

 cated and accomplished gentlemen of 1857, on both sides of the 

 Atlantic. 



Furthermore, I believe, that very much of the absurdly 

 exaggerated estimate which tradition has set on the mythical 

 performances of the horses of the olden time, on the racing turf, 

 such as Childers, Eclipse, and many others of the same period — 

 an estimate which still miraculously befogs the judgment even 

 of men capable of judgment, long after it has been proved to be 

 founded on nothing — has its origin, in a great measure, from the 

 incalculable superiority of thoroughbred horses, even of ordinary 

 excellence, to the coarse-bred road-liacks and scarcely superior 

 hunters of that day. 



To men, accustomed to ride Cleveland Bays, with no cross 

 of thorough blood, in their unmixed state, as the best style 

 of hunters, and to trot along the road on animals which no 



