Meanixg of " QrAL/ry." y 



— that is of the law — a distinction utterly unknown in England, where military, naval, and legal 

 eminence and fortunate marriages, have created our greatest houses. As a matter of fact, the 

 aristocracy of men is much more a matter of education, and position, maintained through two or 

 three generations, than of pedigree. It would be impossible in a mixed assembly of well-to-do 

 Englishmen and Englishwomen, for instance, at a Buckingham Palace ball or an Oxford 

 convocation, to pick out the representatives of the most ancient families by their personal 

 appearance, or to distinguish them from others who had enjoyed for only one generation 

 the advantages of education, freedom from petty cares, and good society. Indeed, it has 

 been argued, with a considerable show of reason, that our aristocracy includes so many beautiful 

 women and handsome manly men, because our nobility have been in the habit of selecting their 

 wives without regard to pedigree. 



With horses it is quite different. It will take many generations to get rid of one cart-horse 



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HU.NTING THE LION. (fRIM AN ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE.) 



cross ; the stain will suddenly reappear after many years, in the most unexpected manner. The 

 produce of a sire and mare, both apparently of the purest blood, will show some sign of a remote 

 ignoble alliance, in a vulgar head, coarse mane and tail, or shaggy fetlocks. 



" Quality " means evidence of blood, in the form and expression of the head, the symmetry 

 of the limbs, and the velvet-like softness of the skin. 



The advantages of a large admixture of blood are not merely picturesque. Blood implies 

 superior wind, energy, endurance, and muscular power, bones of more ivory-like texture, and tougher 

 tendons and sinews. Our English blood-horse is, in the historical sense, a modern creation, not two 

 hundred years old. His ancestors came from Africa and Asia. The most ancient historical blood- 

 horses were Egyptian. The Assyrian bas-reliefs preserved in the British Museum, and copied in 

 Layard's great work, present faithful delineations of the Oriental blood-horse, harnessed to 

 chariots, in war and in the chase, and carrying spear-bearing horsemen on their conquests some 

 thousands of years ago. Egyptian bas-reliefs still more ancient than the Assyrian are in exist- 

 ence ; but in them the horse is depicted in a conventional manner, and not with the life-like 

 fidelity which distinguishes the work of the Assyrian sculptors. Still, they are sufficiently 



