^Nimrod'^ 



coach-horse, as well as the sort of horses put into other 

 kinds of harness ; but this has been progressive. Fifty 

 years ago, the idea of putting a thorough-bred horse into 

 harness would have been considered preposterous. In the 

 carriages of our noblemen and gentlemen, the long-tailed 

 black, or Cleveland bay — each one remove from the cart- 

 horse — was the prevailing sort, and six miles an hour the 

 extent of his pace ; and he cost from thirty pounds to fifty 

 pounds. A few years back, a nobleman gave seven hundred 

 guineas for a horse to draw his cabriolet : two hundred 

 guineas is now an every-day price for a horse of this de- 

 scription, and a hundred and fifty for a gentleman's coach- 

 horse ! Indeed, a pair of handsome coach-horses, fit for 

 London, and well broken and bitted, cannot be purchased 

 under two hundred guineas ; and even job -masters often 

 give much more for them to let out to their customers. In 

 harness, also, we think we have arrived at perfection, to 

 which the invention of the patent shining leather has mainly 

 contributed. A handsome horse, well harnessed, is a noble 

 sight ; and is it not extraordinary that in no country but 

 England is the art of putting horses into harness gener- 

 ally understood ? Independently of the workmanship of 

 the harness -maker, if our road -horses were put to their 

 coaches in the loose awkward fashion of the Continent, we 

 could never travel at the rate we do. It is the command 

 given over the coach-horse that alone enables us to do it. 



We may as well say a word or two as to private vehicles 

 ere we close. As a facsimile of the gentleman's family- 



227 



