30 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEIXG. 



Such a people must have loved the bold, dauntless 

 courage of the horse, and while seeking to do its un- 

 matchable powers justice in their poetry and adoration 

 in their religion, they have testified to all posterity, by 

 the unerring delineations of their chisels, the beauty and 

 the grandeur of his form and disposition. We have an 

 example of this in the Panathenaic frieze, where the 

 horses are not only of exquisite beauty, but full of life 

 and fire. No two out of the hundred and ten which are 

 introduced are in the same attitude, and each is charac- 

 terized by a different expression. Flaxman ever spoke of 

 these horses with enthusiasm, and we cannot wonder at it. 

 ' The horses in the frieze in the Elgin collection,' he 

 said, ' appear to live and move, to roll their eyes, to 

 gallop, prance, and curvet ; the veins of their faces and 

 legs seem distended with circulation ; in them are dis- 

 tinguished the hardness and decision of bony forms, from 

 the elasticity of tendons and the softness of flesh. The 

 beholder is concerned with the deer-like lightness and 

 elegance of their make, and although the relief is not 

 above an inch from the background, and they are so 

 much smaller than nature, we can scarcely suffer reason 

 to persuade us they are not alive.'' 



The horses of Thessaly are there depicted as they 

 exist at the present day, even to the characteristic large 

 heads and thick necks.^ 



To say that they are exactly portrayed in every 

 anatomical detail, is to declare nothing but the simple 

 truth, and is sufficient for our object. And yet the very 



' Lectures on Science, vol. iv. p. 104. 

 " DodweJJ, Travels, vol. i. p. 339. 



