That we have, as a nation, already to a great extent lost much of the interest we took only a few years ago in horses, and in all that appertains to them, is, I think, beyond dispute. The number of men who keep what must be termed “pleasure” horses decreases year by year, almost month by month, and indeed it would be possible to name at off-hand between fifty and sixty well-known men and women fond of sport who, within the last six months or so, have sold their carriages and all their harness horses, and whose stables now contain only hunters, while in other cases even the hunters have been got rid of in order to make way for automobiles. And yet, bemoan the change though we may, the gradual transition is not uninteresting to study. History in the past has for centuries been both directly and indirectly affected by the horses and horsemanship of the various races the world over. History in the future is going to be similarly affected by motor power applied in a variety of ways. And yet, who knows? Perhaps even half-a-century hence, when the horse will to all intents be extinct in England, save where he is kept for racing and in some instances for hunting purposes, interest may still be taken in Shakespeare's plays and therefore in the stories of such whimsical characters as the self-satisfied, conceited and generally grotesque Sir Andrew Aguecheek and his celebrated grey steed, Capilet, that we find portrayed so admirably in _Twelfth Night_; in Lord Lafeu of _All's Well that Ends Well_ and his curious bay horse, Curtal, a name that means literally “the cropped one”; and in Cut, the carrier's horse of _King Henry IV._,—to name but a few of Shakespeare's creations that surely must live on for ever. With regard to barb horses, of which so much has been said and written, the probability would seem to be that “barbed” is in reality a corrupt form of the word “barded” that came originally from the French, _bardé_—that is to say, caparisoned—and therefore it may signify indirectly a horse in armour. Hence the meaning probably intended by Shakespeare to be conveyed in the following lines in _King Richard III._:— “And now—instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,— He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.” Shakespeare and Bishop Hall, in addition to one or two other writers, speak of the horse, Marocco, which lived in Elizabeth's reign, and belonged to a man named Banks, or Bankes, a brother of the first keeper of the New Warren. Foaled, so far as one can gather, at Newmarket, Marocco appears to have been one of the cleverest of the few horses that at that period had been trained to perform at fairs, and in shows and circuses.