34 THE UOKSE. 



and a grace, must have been cultivated to a high degree in 

 Athens, how deficient soever the state might be in cavahy, as 

 an arm of tlie service. 



These horses, then, of Minerva on the Acropolis, hard by 

 the spot where the first of the race was fabled in the ancient 

 mythos to have sprung from the earth at the summoning of the 

 world- shaker's trident, carved from the pure Pentelical or Pa- 

 rian ]"ock, in the school, if not by the hand, of the greatest of 

 Greek sculptors, may be presumed copies from the most per- 

 fect type of the Greek, as the sculptures of Nineveh have been 

 assumed to be models of the Assyrian or oriental courser. 



Now, judging from these sculptures, the Greek horse was 

 not above fourteen and a half hands in height ; and, instead of 

 the graceful, spiry formation of the Arab, the Barb, or the 

 Thorough-bred, had the short, rigid, stocky shapes of the Gal- 

 loway or Cob. They are all what is vulgarly termed cock- 

 thrappled, — that is to say, having the windpipe and fore-neck, 

 above its insertion in the chest, jDrojected like the same parts of 

 a game-cock when in the act of crowing — a fault in formation, 

 which renders it impossible for the animal to bring his chin 

 in to his chest, when curbed upon his haunches ; and, with 

 their hogged manes, short, closely-ribbed, round barrels, heavy 

 joints, short, stiff pasterns, and high, upright hoofs, look like, 

 what they doubtless were, a large breed of clever, active, able 

 Galloways. 



In my youth, I have seen fifty, and owned and ridden near- 

 ly half-a-dozen, half or one third bred Galloways, which retain- 

 ing the exact cut and type of the original Scottish Galloway 

 pony, had some admixture of pure blood, and any one of these 

 might have served as an exemplar for the Athenian horse of 

 the Elgin marbles. 



The description of animal I mean, though rarely seen in 

 this country, is common enough in England, being that to 

 •which the sons of the landed gentry, while learning to ride, are 

 ordinarily promoted, as an intermediate step between the small 

 pony and the full-blooded hunter. I have seen some of them 

 carry their light-weight-riders well up to hounds, and hold a 

 good place among real horses with men on their backs. But, 

 as horses to be backed by men, they would be nowhere on a 



