60 THE RACE-HORSE. 



the properties they. ascribe to some of those which 

 now do exist. 



But to return to the alleged alteration for the 

 worse in the British race-horse. We admit the 

 fact, that he is not so good at high weight over 

 the Beacon at Newmarket, or any other four-mile 

 course, as his predecessors were, whose descent was 

 closer than his is to the blood of Herod and Eclipse, 

 and the descendants of that cross, said to be the 

 stoutest of any. Nevertheless he is, in his present 

 form, more generally adapted to the purposes to 

 which the horse is applied. He has a shorter, but 

 more active, stroke in his gallop than his predeces- 

 sors had, which is more available to him in the 

 short races of the present time than the deep rate 

 of the four-milers of old times ; and as he is now- 

 required to start quickly, and to be on his legs, as 

 the term is, in a few hundred yards, he is alto- 

 gether a more lively active animal than formerly ; 

 and, as such, a useful animal for more ends than 

 one. In former days, not one trained thorough- 

 bred horse in fifty made a hunter. Indeed, few- 

 sportsmen had the courage to try the experiment 

 of making him one. He went more upon his shoul- 

 ders, as well as with a straighter knee, than the 

 modern race-horse does, and required much greater 

 exertion in the rider to pull him together in his 

 gallop. All those sportsmen, however, wdio remem- 

 ber such horses as the late Earl Grosvenor's John 

 Bull and Alexander, must admit, that, in form 

 and substance, they were equal to carrying the 



