HISTORY. 439 



state the Common Ass has been derived, this creature, we 

 know, has been subjected to captivity from the earliest con- 

 gregation of men into societies. Amongst the treasures of 

 the early shepherds of Syria, the Ass is continually men- 

 tioned, along with the Camel and the Ox, as the beast em- 

 ployed in journeyings and the bearing of burdens ; and even 

 after the return of the descendants of Israel from a country 

 of chariots and horses to the land of their promised inheri- 

 tance, they preserved the simple habits of their forefathers 

 in the use of this ancient servant. They seem to have had 

 their asses of nobler blood, to which they applied a peculiar 

 term. Princes and the honourable of the land did not dis- 

 dain to be borne by this ancient steed. Saul,' when called 

 by a glorious destiny to be the King of Israel, was in search 

 of his father's asses, or atonoth. which had strayed. His 

 warlike successor had his superintendent of atonoth, as of 

 the other branches of his government ; and even after the 

 Horse was introduced for the purposes of traffic and war, 

 the services of the patient Ass were neither disused nor de- 

 spised. He was, in like manner, domesticated from the 

 earliest times by the Arabians, the Persians, and other people 

 of the East. He was familiar to the Egyptians, as history 

 and their sculptured monuments attest ; to the Libyans ; 

 and, it may be believed, to the other inhabitants of Africa 

 bordering on the Great Desert. He was known to the Greeks, 

 as we learn from their earliest writers ; to the Romans, who 

 cultivated the race with care ; to the Spaniards, whose early 

 intercourse with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians could not 

 fail to make them familiar with so useful a creature. Ac- 

 cording to Strabo, he was unknown to the Britons, and to 

 the inhabitants of the countries of the Baltic. He at length 

 found his way beyond the Alps into Gaul, and, at a period 

 comparatively recent, into the northern countries of Europe. 

 The Ass, reduced to bondage, loses the fleetness, the spirit, 

 and the wildness, which he possesses in the state of nature. 

 Unlike to the Horse, who readily becomes devoted to his 



