ATTIC HOKSKS, OF PHIDIAS, 33 



or that the delineations were made from what was then consid- 

 ered the finest and most perfect type of the cj'eature, which is 

 generally represented as ministering to the pleasures of the 

 great king. 



In all respects, then, it must be observed, the horses of the 

 oriental royalties, which were harnessed in the scythed, cars of 

 those Assyrian conquerors, who came down on Israel " like the 

 wolf on tlie fold ; " and in the iron chariots of those Phoenician 

 kings of Canaan, who "fought in Taanach by the waters of 

 Megiddo," when " the river of Kishon swept them away, that 

 ancient river, the river Kishon," were as unlike as possible to 

 the low-statured, delicate-limbed, small-headed Arabs and 

 Barbs, with their basin-faces, large full eyes, and. long thin 

 manes, from which the modern blood horse has derived his pe- 

 culiar excellence. 



Next to these, probably, in antiquity, and infinitely surpass- 

 ing them in beauty of design and perfection of execution, — sur- 

 passing, it is likely, any thing that ever has been, or that ever 

 will be performed in sculpture, we have the superb equestrian 

 groups from the Propylgea of the temple of Minerva in the 

 Acropolis at Athens, preserved in the British Museum, and uni- 

 versally known as the Elgin marbles ; which are generally sup- 

 posed to be the work of Phidias and his pujDils ; the work of 

 the Athenian chisel, surely, when Grecian art was at its highest 

 flight, and when the Attic mania for horse-breeding was at the 

 extreme of fashion. 



The attitudes and action of the cavalry and the seats of the 

 cavaliers, the high-born A^^m, which word, like its equivalent 

 the Roman cquites^ we erroneously translate hnights, are inimi- 

 table. ISTothing that the pencil, the burin, or the chisel, ever 

 has delineated, excels, if it equals, these sculptures, destined 

 only to be regarded from a distance, as being the decorations of 

 the frieze of a gigantic temple, for freedom, ease, vigor and spirit. 



In one of the finest groups some half-dozen riders are cara- 

 coling gayly along, their horses well thrown back on their 

 haunches, some going disunited, some at a regular and perfect 

 canter, and sitting the animals with a pose of such perfect bal- 

 ance, ease, aplomb and grace, so that the rider's hand is entirely 

 independent of his seat, as proves that equestrianism, as an art 

 YoL. I.— 3 



