CART HORSES. 207 
‘irritable and vicious! Breeders for the turf have 
succeeded in substituting the straight line for the 
curve, as the dominant expressional line, a sure 
and scientific manner of eradicating the elements of 
beauty. No real artist would ever paint race horses 
from choice. Good artists have occasionally painted 
them for money. The meagre limbs, straight lines, 
and shiny coat have slight charm for an artist, who 
generally chooses either what is beautiful or what is 
picturesque, and the race horse is neither picturesque 
nor beautiful.” 
Certainly there is some exaggeration here. Many 
thoroughbred horses are good-tempered and affection- 
ate, and not unduly nervous. In the recent Badmin- 
ton volume on Driving, there is an account of a 
young thoroughbred: mare, that, having never been 
in harness before, was attached one day to a dog-cart, 
and driven thirty miles up and down hill, without 
showing the least fear or resistance. A thoroughbred 
of this character commonly has large, luminous eyes, 
more beautiful than those possessed by any other 
dumb animal. The delicately cut ear, the round, 
thin, quivering nostril, and even the smooth and 
shining coat, — these, again, are surely forms of the 
beautiful, though not of the picturesque. It must 
be remembered, also, that among thoroughbred horses 
there is a great variety of structure and disposition. 
Many of them are comparatively short in leg, with 
round body and curved neck. Such was the old 
type of thoroughbred when the Arab blood from 
which the present race has chiefly been derived was 
“closer up,” as horsemen say. 
In the main, however, Mr. Hamerton’s remarks on 
