The Byerly Ttirk. 1 8 1 



Eventually he came into that ** Hospital for Decayed 

 Cracks," as Parson Harvey's Sloane-street stables were 

 termed. After that, he stood at " The Royells," in 

 Cheshire, where he was not very lucky, and he was 

 rising twenty-tree, and at Mr. Lechmere Charlton's, 

 near Ludlow, when he got Pantaloon. This chestnut, 

 who was very profusely marked with black spots, was 

 on a very large scale, with a heavy neck and most 

 beautiful legs ; and John Scott used to be one of his 

 most devoted admirers. He was rather proud and 

 odd with strangers, and was a wonderfully cheap bar- 

 gain for Lord Westminster at six hundred guineas, 

 which would never have been given but for the strong 

 entreaties of Nutting, the then stud-groom. His blood 

 nicked reverse ways with Touchstone's, in the case of 

 Phryne and Ghuznee (the very model of a useful, 

 short-legged mare) ; and in fact whenever it has come 

 together, and with that of no other horse so well. The 

 dashmg family speed came out through him in Sleight- 

 of-Hand, and his son. Odd Trick, whose great up- 

 standing quarters sent him like a minie ball up the 

 Cambridgeshire hill, albeit his middle is so little in 

 keeping with them. He is the speediest Mr. Parr ever 

 trained, and the sixty guineas which he gave for him 

 as a yearling, at Sir Tatton's sale, returned with usury 

 in the shape of twenty thousand in bets, none of which 

 was got on at less than thirties to one. 



Merlin was, after all, the best racer Death of 

 by Castrel, and Lord Foley gave two Merlins Groom. 

 thousand guineas for him at two years old. His 

 remembrance of the slings, in the days when he broke 

 his leg running with Tiresias, made such a fury of him, 

 that grooms and breeders grew alike frightened, and 

 Lamplighter and his son. Phosphorus, did not keep 

 the lamp of his fame alive. The broken leg eventually 

 became the best, but the accident produced a most re- 

 markable species of stringhalt ; and he was wont to 

 lift each leg, and shake them tremulously for some 



