CART HORSES. 207 



irritable and vicious ! Breeders for the turf have 

 succeeded in substituting the straight line for the 

 curve, as the dominant expressional line, a sure 

 and scientific maimer of eradicating the elements of 

 beauty. No real artist would ever paint race horses 

 from choice. Good artists have occasionally painted 

 them for money. The meagre limbs, straight lines, 

 and shiny coat have slight charm for an artist, who 

 generally chooses either what is beautiful or what is 

 picturesque, and the race horse is neither picturesque 

 nor beautiful." 



Certainly there is some exaggeration here. Many 

 thoroughbred horses are good-tempered and affection- 

 ate, and not unduly nervous. In the recent Badmin- 

 ton volume on Driving, there is an account of a 

 young thoroughbred mare, that, having never been 

 in harness before, was attached one day to a dog-cart, 

 and driven thirty miles up and down hill, without 

 showing the least fear or resistance. A thoroughbred 

 of this character commonly has large, luminous eyes, 

 more beautiful than those possessed by any other 

 dumb animal. The delicately cut ear, the round, 

 thin, quivering nostril, and even the smooth and 

 shining coat, — these, again, are surely forms of the 

 beautiful, though not of the picturesque. It must 

 be remembered, also, that among thoroughbred horses 

 there is a great variety of structure and disposition. 

 Many of them are comparatively short in leg, with 

 round body and curved neck. Such was the old 

 type of thoroughbred when the Arab blood from 

 which the present race has chiefly been derived was 

 '■closer up," as horsemen say. 



In the main, however, Mr. Hamerton's remarks on 



