CARRIAGE HORSES AND COBS. 183 
The new coach-owner thus describes his first May- 
day parade: “And so anon we went along through 
the town, with our new liveries of serge, and the 
horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the 
standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green 
reines, that people did mightily look upon us; and 
the truth is I did not see any coach more pretty, 
though more gay than ours, all the day.” But this 
was not his first appearance in Hyde Park in his own 
coach. That occurred a few weeks before, and Pepys 
has described it thus: “Thence to Hyde Park, the 
first time we were there this year, or ever in our own 
coach, where, with mighty pride, rode up and down, 
and many coaches there; and I thought our horses 
and coach as pretty as any there, and observed so 
to be by others.” 
Later still, toward the middle of the eighteenth 
century, began that very great and rapid improve- 
ment—noted, as we have seen, by Horace Walpole — 
in highways, vehicles, and horses, which increased 
the rate of travel from four or five to twelve miles 
an hour, and culminated with the introduction of 
railways. 
The carriage horse, it need scarcely be said, became 
lighter and more active according as the weight that 
he had to draw, and more especially the friction of 
the roadways, diminished. Originally he was simply 
a beast of burden, the first English carriage horse 
being of the old black cart or shire horse strain, a 
huge, ungainly animal, with a big head and shaggy 
fetlocks. Contemporary with the cart horse coachers 
were the “running footmen,” with their wands of 
office. The chariots which they attended progressed 
