156 NATURAL HISTORY. 



refuses nothing, makes use of all his strength, exerts 

 himself heyoncl it, and even dies to obey us. 



Such is the Horse, whose natural qualities art has 

 improved, which from the earliest ages has heen bro- 

 ken to the service of man. His education commences 

 with the loss of his liberty, and by constraint it is 

 finished. The servitude of these creatures is univer- 

 sal, and so ancient that we rarely see them in their 

 natural state. They are never wholly free from all 

 their bands, not even at the time of rest ; and if they 

 are sometimes suffered to range at liberty in the fields 

 they always bear about them the marks of servitude, and 

 frequently the cruel marks of labour and of pain. The 

 mouth is deformed by the wrinkles occasioned by the 

 bit, the flank scarred with wounds, inflicted by the 

 spur, the hoofs are pierced by nails, and the attitude 

 of the body constrained by habitual shackles. Even 

 those whose servitude is the most gentle, who are on- 

 ly fed and broken for luxury and magnificence, and 

 whose golden chains serve less to decorate them, than 

 to satisfy the vanity of their master, are still more 

 dishonoured by the elegance of their trappings, by 

 the tresses of their manes, by the gold and silk with 

 which they are covered, than by the iron shoes on 

 their feet. 



Nature is more beautiful than art, and in an ani- 

 mated being, the freedom of its movements makes 

 nature beautiful. Observe the horses in Spanish . 

 America, that live wild ; their gait, their running, or 

 their leaping, seem neither constrained nor regular. 

 Proud of their independence, they fly the presence of 

 man, and disdain his care. They wander about in 

 liberty, in immense meads, where they feed on the 

 fresh productions, of an eternal spring. Destitute of 



