HISTORY. 459 



ments we learn, that the ancestors of the Israelites were 

 not possessed of horses when they dwelt in the plains of 

 Syria. When Abraham sent his servant from Palestine to 

 Mesopotamia to bring a wife for his son Isaac, the man 

 announces himself to Laban, the brother of Rebecca, thus : 

 " I am Abraham's servant, and the Lord hath blessed my 

 master greatly, and he is become great ; and he hath given 

 him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-servants 

 and maid- servants, and camels and asses." No mention is 

 made of the Horse, nor, in the subsequent enumeration of 

 the treasures of Isaac, is the Horse once spoken of. And 

 when Jacob returned from Mesopotamia to the land of his 

 kindred, he had oxen and sheep, and goats and asses, and 

 camels, but no horses. In a later age, the descendants of 

 Jacob multiplied in a district of Egypt, lying between the 

 Nile and the Red Sea, whence their great legislator con- 

 ducted them to the country which they were to render their 

 own. During their long abode of more than four hundred 

 years in the land of Egypt, they retained the habits of their 

 ancestors in what regarded the Horse. In the law which 

 they were required to obey, reference is made to the Ass, in 

 order to denounce its flesh as unclean, to condemn the sin 

 of coveting it when it belonged to a neighbour, and to com- 

 mand that it should be suffered to rest from its labours on 

 the Sabbath-day ; but no allusion is made to the Horse as 

 a part of the goods of the people. Nay, it is an injunction 

 to them, that they shall not possess themselves of this ani- 

 mal in the land to which they were journeying. This rocky 

 and limited territory was then, as it is now, little suited to 

 the rearing of the Horse, and never could be so well defend- 

 ed by cavalry as by infantry ; and it is a historical fact, that 

 the Jews were never so successful in war as when they trust- 

 ed to the latter arm, as in the earlier period of their history, 

 and at a subsequent age, during the glorious struggle of the 

 Maccabees. Moses, with a prescient knowledge of the na- 

 ture of the country which was to be subdued, discourages 



