26 STABLE MANUAL AND HORSE DOCTOR 



better, and gentlemen became charioteers, with their 

 phaetons-and-four, and when this was followed by the 

 barouche, then Cleveland sent up its stock for carriage- 

 horses, and they began to get those higher bred. 



Partly, perhaps, to favour the kind of horse that had 

 become in vogue, but much more in consequence of good 

 roads, small carriages bocame in vogue also. All sorts of 

 vehicles, with all sorts of names, shapes, sizes, and con- 

 struction, were and are seen in the streets ; and all the 

 ingenuity of man was called forth to produce something 

 new. But the ultimatum of all this ingenuity appears 

 to have been to enable a family, constituting in itself a 

 host, to avail themselves of the convenience of one carriage 

 and one horse. The large, old-fashioned family coach is 

 no longer seen. This was a capacious, lumbering-looking 

 vehicle, it must be allowed ; six inside, two footmen and 

 coachman, made nine in number. This was thought 

 enough for two large coach horses; but now we seldom 

 see a galloway, or, at all events, a small horse, without a 

 machine built for four somewhere, and two on the dicky. 

 So horses have not all the best of the change of carriage ; 

 but, praised be M'Adam ! he brings things through ; for the 

 present landau pilentum is not much lighter than the 

 coach of seventy or eighty years since. It looks so 

 from the absence of bulk of wood and the substitution 

 of iron ; but it is the roads, not the carriages, that favour 

 horses. Bring back the old roads, and you must get 

 back the old coach and coach horse ; but I trust we shall 

 never see either again." 



IV.— The Hackney. 



A capital judge in equine matters has well said that 

 a perfect hack or roadster is the rarest phenomenon in 

 horse-flesh. To judge the just properties, we must have an 

 accurate perception of the end for which the animal is 

 designed, for according to the end the proportions vary. 

 Thus, there is one set of proportions for the racer, another 

 for the hunter, another for the hackney, another for the 

 coach horse, and another for the cart horse ; and as each 

 of these merges into the other's qualities, so is it inferior 

 for its special objects. Each, too, possesses its own style 

 of beauty. 



