156 Silk and Scarlet. 



THE GODOLPHIN ARABIAN. 



** 'Midst cringing serfs, and trembling hinds forlorn, 

 Dwindles the offspring of the ' Desert Born ;' 

 But here it thrives unrivalled ; far more fleet 

 Our steeds than those which Yemen's barley eat." 



TheGodoiphin 'T^HE antecedents of this Knight of 

 Arabian J_ the Wonderful Crest are quite be- 



yond our ken. A treatise might doubtless be written, 

 not only proving to demonstration that his dam could 

 fulfil the requirements of the Koran, and hide her 

 rider with her tail, but settling the very position of the 

 palm tree under which he was foaled in the star-light, 

 or of the tent-door at which children's tiny fingers first 

 fed him with crusts on the slopes of Lebanon. It is 

 enough for us to learn that he measured fourteen and 

 a half; that he was originally given by a Mr. Coke, to 

 the proprietor of the St. James s Coffee-house, and that 

 he died honourably under the shadow of the Gogma- 

 gog Hills in 1753. The sire-list, eight years after his 

 death, contained at least fifteen of his sons, one of 

 which, "The Gower Stallion" is described therein as 

 having " bone enough to carry eighteen stone a hunt- 

 ing." Few of them seem to have possessed so 

 much early promise as Spanking Roger, whose dam 

 was by the Duke of Rutland's Cyprus Arabian. He, 

 however, fell dead in a trial, and although the note to 

 his " Portraiture" remarks " that he was a horse of size 

 and beauty ;" it candidly adds, " the latter of which 

 received a considerable addition from a heat of temper 

 in his nature, which was rather too great to be rightly 

 consistent with the advantage of running." Mr. Glad- 

 stone, or the most highly tried clerk in the Circumlo- 

 cution Office, could not have sketched a hard puller 

 more ably. 



Calendar Adver- To wHte attractive notlces of their 

 tisements. horses for the advertisement sheet of Mr 



