THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 7 



silver ; and his Empress, Poppaea, was not content 

 with less than gold for the same purpose. These 

 sandals were very insecure, and were apt to be left 

 sticking in the mud ; they were, therefore, seldom 

 put on the animal for the whole journey, but only at 

 the worst places. Nor do they appear to have been 

 adequate to protect the hoof from injury ; for instance, 

 when Mithridates was besieging the town of Cyzicus, 

 in his first war against the Romans, he was obliged to 

 send away his whole cavalry to Bithynia, because the 

 horses' hoofs were all worn down, and their feet 

 disordered. 



Here again, as in the case of the stirrupless 

 saddle, we are lost in wonder at the fact, that men 

 should, for nearly a thousand years, have gone on 

 fasten ng plates of metal under horses' hoofs by the 

 clumsy means of strings and bands ; and that it should 

 never in all that time have occurred to them to try 

 nails where strings had failed. Next to the inven- 

 tive powers of men there is really nothing so wonder- 

 ful as their want of inventiveness, and the stupid way in 

 which they will continue from generation to genera- 

 tion, doing something very absurd from mere force 

 of habit, and utter want of thought ! It is humi- 

 liating to think, how men have been content to remain 

 for ages separated by the smallest possible partitions 

 from discoveries in the arts, that tend to the conve- 

 nience and embellishment of life. We have had India 



