284 SNEYDERS' NONDESCRIPTS. 



ment lay the object at once before us, and his form 

 -will be as familiar to our posterity as to ourselves. 

 We know from records in print what race-horses have 

 done in former days (that is, what a very few have 

 done), and if the animal painter had been as much 

 encouraged formerly as he is now, we should have 

 been able to trace the form of the race-horse correctly 

 from the time when the Beacon Course was first 

 established. Our posterity will in this particular have 

 an advantage over us, doubtless an advantage it will 

 be to them, and a great one. 



It is only within a few years that animal painting 

 became tolerable as to merit : formerly the sculptor 

 far exceeded the painter in his representations of the 

 horse. It would be worse than crime in some person's 

 eyes to say a word in dispraise of ancient Masters. 

 Of their pictures as pictures it does not become me 

 to give an opinion ; but of their animals I must venture 

 to say, that comparatively in that line of their pro- 

 fession, generally speaking, they could not paint at all. 

 Look at an original or a copy of Sneyders two dogs 

 running, their shoulders looking as if they had been 

 driven back into their ribs, from the animal having 

 attempted to run through some iron-gate too narrow 

 to allow him to pass ; a third or fourth lying on his 

 back with his bowels protruding, with a'great red open 

 mouth as large as that of an alligator ; while two 

 more appear coming up, with their bodies half cut off 

 by the frame of the picture, holding forth two pair of 

 fore-legs in about the same animated position as the 

 poles of a sedan-chair their only earthly merit being 

 that they look so decidedly and (as Jonathan would 

 say) so everlastingly stationary, that we are under no 

 apprehension of being ever treated by the appearance 



