The Marquis de la Fayette rode in August, 1778, from Rhode Island to Boston, nearly seventy miles distant, in seven hours, and returned in six and a half.
Mr. Fozard, of Park Lane, London, for a wager of one hundred and fifty pounds against one hundred pounds, undertook to ride forty miles in two hours, over Epsom course. He rode two miles more than had been agreed on, and performed it in five minutes under time, in October, 1789.
Mr. Wilde, an Irish gentleman, lately rode one hundred and twenty-seven miles on the course of Kildare, in Ireland, in six hours and twenty minutes, for a wager of one thousand guineas.
The famous Count de Montgomery escaped from the massacre of Paris in 1572, through the swiftness of his horse, which, according to a manuscript of that time, carried him ninety miles without halting.
WONDERFUL HORSE.
In the year 1609, an Englishman named Banks had a horse which he had trained to follow him wherever he went, even over fences and to the roofs of buildings. He and his horse went to the top of that immensely high structure, St. Paul’s Church. After many extraordinary performances at home, the horse and his master went to Rome, where they performed feats equally astonishing. But the result was that both Banks and his horse were burned, by order of the Pope, as enchanters. Sir Walter Raleigh observes, that had Banks lived in olden times, he would have shamed all the enchanters of the world, for no beast ever performed such wonders as his.
Fortunately, for men like Thorne, and Rice, and Franconi, who have been so successful in training the noblest animal in creation for the stage-representations of Mazeppa, Putnam’s Leap, &c., and for the various and fantastic tricks which have won so much admiration and applause, the present age is not disgraced by such besotted ignorance and superstition.
WONDERFUL LOCK.
Among the wonderful products of art in the French Crystal Palace was shown a lock which admits of 3,674,385 combinations. Heuret passed a hundred and twenty nights in locking it, and Fichet was four months in unlocking it; now they can neither shut nor open it.