Dead and buried is he years agone; but I still recall, with memory's aid, the dark bay horse, blood-like, symmetrical, beauteous in form as aristocratic in bearing. 'Hasn't he the terrifyin' head on him?' queried an Irish sympathiser, somewhat incongruously, as he gazed with rapt air and admiring eyes at the tapering muzzle, large, soft eyes, and Arab frontal.
Delicate, deer-like, strictly Eastern was the head referred to, beautifully set on a perfectly-arched neck, which again joined oblique, truly perfect shoulders. Their mechanism must have been such, inasmuch as never did I know any living horse with such liberty of forehand action.
Walking or cantering down an incline, shut but your eyes, and you were unable to tell by bodily sensation whether you were on level ground or otherwise. He 'pulled up' in a way different from any other horse. Apparently, he put out his legs, and, lo! you were again at a walk. No prop, shake, or jar was perceptible. It was a magical transformation. An invalid recovering from a fever could have ridden him a day's journey. No one could fall off him in fact.
amid the green forest parks of Trawalla, at no great distance from Buninyong, or the historic goldfield of Ballarat.
His sire, Cornborough, than whom no better horse ever left England, was a brown horse, like The Premier and Rory O'More; like them, middle-sized, symmetrical rather than powerful. Among the early cracks that owed their speed and courage to him were Cornet, Bessie Bedlam, Beeswing, Ballarat, The Margravine (dam of Lord Clyde), with many others, now half forgotten. Cornet was, I think, the first of his progeny trained. He ran away with most of the two-year-old stakes of the day, to be ever after known as a fast horse and a good stayer. I remember his beating Macknight's St. George at Port Fairy, in a match for £100, and winning various other stakes and prizes. His half-sister, Mr. Austin's Bessie Bedlam, was one of the most beautiful race-horses ever saddled. I well remember her running in old days, and can see her now, stepping along daintily with her head up, like an antelope. She won many a race, and was successful as a stud matron after turf triumphs were over. Beeswing was also good, but not equal to her. Ballarat was a great raking, handsome chestnut mare, bred by Dick Scott, a stock-rider of Mr. Goldsmith's. She must have had a good turn of speed, inasmuch as she won the All-aged Stakes in Melbourne, as a three-year old. The Cornboroughs, like the Premiers, were remarkable for their temperate dispositions. They had abundance of courage, but no tendency to vice of any kind.