30 
THE HORSE. 
CLASSES OF BRITISH HORSES. 
When these Islands then became the prey of Roman ambition, the horses of the country were those of the pristine settlers of 
Western Europe, either brought in a state of domestication from the East, or derived from the wild races existing in the wastes 
of Europe. That they were in great numbers we learn from the Roman writers. CAESAR continually refers to the daring cavalry 
and destructive chariots by which he was opposed. At his landing, the Britons, spurring their horses into the sea, assailed his le¬ 
gions ere they could reach the shore. In his first expedition he merely saw the country which he came to subdue. In his second, 
he followed the Britons into the interior, and, fording the Thames, he routed on its banks their great leader Cassiyelaunus, 
who, he tells us, having lost all hopes of success by battle, disbanded the greatest part of his forces, and retained about 4000 
chariots, with which he harassed the Romans as occasion offered. Subsequent writers speak of the horsemen and charioteers of 
the Celtic Britons. Tacitus, in describing the last great battle which the Caledonii fought with Agricola near the passes of the 
Grampians, states that their first line was in the plain, and the next on the sloping ascent of the mountains, and that the space 
between the armies was filled with the cavalry and charioteers of the Britons rushing to and fro with loud noise. They rushed, 
he tells us, in their armed chariots at full speed, and mixed in battle with the infantry. Their first impression struck terror, but 
their career was soon checked by the thick ranks of their enemies and by the inequalities of the ground, and, crowding upon one 
another, they were thrown into disorder. Chariots without a guide, and horses without a rider, broke away in wild confusion and 
trampled upon the ranks. The horses of the country, it is certain, must have been numerous when they formed the strength of an 
army in a country so wild and mountainous. 
Whatever was the character of these early Horses with respect to size, strength, and other properties, it is probable that for 
many ages they underwent little change. Previous to the fall of the Roman Empire, northern pirates had ravaged the coasts 
of Britain, and fixed themselves in some of the remoter Islands. But it was not till the fifth century that Gothic hordes 
began those regular invasions which terminated in the subjection of nearly all the Island, and the imposition of a new language 
-and new customs on the people. They seem first to have landed in numbers on the shores of the Firth of Forth, although 
history usually refers their first permanent settlement to an invitation of the Romanized Britains of the south for protection 
from the ravages of the northern tribes. However this be, it is certain that about the year 449, when the falling Empire could 
no longer protect the distant provinces, the Saxons, a Gothic people from the countries of the Elbe, landed in South Britain, and 
being followed by successive swarms of Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, their countrymen, continually disembarking on the country 
from the Forth to the shores of Kent, established a dominion which, by creating a new nation, may be said to have affected the 
whole condition of societies throughout the civilized world. 
The supremacy of the Saxons in England lasted for more than 600 years, when it was overthrown by the Normans, a warlike 
people of Scandinavian lineage. Scotland during this period had continued essentially Celtic, with the exception of the kingdom 
of the Lothians, extending from the Forth to the Tweed, which had been early colonized by Saxons; and with the exception at 
length of a portion of the extreme north colonized by Scandinavians. The Celtic inhabitants of North Britain were known 
to the Romans as Caledonii and Picti; and in the third century, in the reign of Dioclesian, we first hear of another people, 
likewise Celtic, who were to give their name to the whole of North Britain. These were the Sceite or Scots, the Scoti and Scoticee 
$entes of the Roman writers, who, landing from the north-east of Ireland on the nearest coasts, gradually extended their power. 
In the beginning of the sixth century they had occupied the Peninsula of Caentir or Cantire, and they gradually advanced north- 
waid and eastwaid until about the year 843, when they had acquired the ascendency over nearly all the native tribes, giving 
that name to the whole of North Britain, which it will for ever retain. 
In the yeai of our Loid 1066, that is, 605 years after the first settlement of Saxons in England, the dominion of the Anglo- 
Saxon princes was overthrown by an army of Normans. But by this time a new race of men had been formed, of mixed lineage, 
but now possessed of a common language, and moulded to a common standard of national character. Scotland was never sub¬ 
jected to the IS ormans; but in thirty-one years after the Norman Conquest, a race of Scoto-Saxon princes succeeded to the Scot¬ 
tish crown, and from that time the Saxon speech and customs rapidly extended over all the Lowlands of Scotland. 
The Saxons, though a Gothic nation, were little given to the multiplying of Horses; and it does not appear that they ever 
became distinguished as horsemen in their new country. It cannot be supposed that they transported many horses to a country 
already possessed of them, in the small and dangerous vessels with which they navigated the northern seas; and therefore it 
may be assumed that, up to the period of the Norman Conquest in England, and for many centuries afterwards in Scotland, the 
Horses of the country remained essentially the same as when the Romans first encountered them in the battle-chariots of the 
Celtee. 
The Normans were a mixed race of military adventurers from the north of Europe, ardently devoted to the Horse as an 
instrument of their wars and silvan exercises. William I. transported with him a numerous cavalry, to which he mainly owed 
