208 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



this point are just, and the typical thoroughbred 

 especially the typical English thoroughbred, is the 

 nervous, irritable, inartistic animal that he describes. 



The cart horse, on the other hand, is a common 

 and appropriate figure in painting. 



Among the minor pictures by Turner in the Na- 

 tional Gallery at London, not the least interesting is 

 one which represents a stout gray farm or cart horse, 

 taking his ease in the stable, and eating hay from a 

 well filled rack above his head. He stands in a wide 

 stall, heaped with yellow straw and flooded with sun- 

 shine, so that the scene is one of equine pleasure 

 and repose, delightful to the human eye on that ac- 

 count, as well as for its harmonious and beautiful 

 coloring. 



There is another homespun sight which English 

 artists never tire of representing. It is that of a 

 string of farm horses, whose day's work is finished, 

 at nightfall. With the harness still upon their backs, 

 they have been ridden or led to drink at a cool, elm- 

 shaded stream, where they stand, fetlock deep, some 

 slowly and luxuriously slaking their thirst, while 

 others gaze idly about, their heads half raised above 

 the surface of the water. This is one of those fa- 

 miliar though foreign sights, as to which an agreeable 

 confusion is apt to arise in the mind of an American; 

 for he does not always clearly remember whether he 

 has seen them in reality or in a picture, or read 

 about them in a novel, the truth often being that 

 his knowledge has been derived in each of these 

 ways. Of all equine pictures, none, I suppose, is 

 better known than Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair. Her 

 noble Percherons, drawn with fond fidelity, are per- 



