HOUSE : FAVORITE OF THE POETS. 
95 
had a horse who never permitted his groom to enter his apart- 
ments without being called. The hapless fellow chancing one day 
to forget this observance, the horse, indignant at his irreverence, 
seized him by the back and ground him against the marble of his 
manger. Pausanias relates, that he knew a horse who showed 
himself completely conscious of his triumph when he had won the 
prize of the race at the Olympic games, and who, whenever this 
happened to him, proudly directed his steps toward the tribunal 
of the judges to claim his crown. 
hfo beast, moreover, has had, and ought to have had a greater 
number of panegyrists, than the horse. Homer causes Patroclus 
to be wept by the horses of Achilles, and makes those of Rhesus 
speak of their good fortune-^this is perhaps a little exaggerated, 
but then he is a poet, he uses his right. I less approve the at- 
tempt of Aristotle, who is only a savant, when he tries to make 
us believe, that in Scythia a horse has been seen, in the act of sui- 
cide, to precipitate himself from the top of a very high rock, in 
order to punish himself for having yielded to an impulse of the 
senses and committed an incest. The horse has enough of other 
qualities, such as memory, tact, courage, and intelligence, to be 
able to dispense with that of modesty, which does not belong to 
him. To attribute to a beast the qualities that he lacks, is. almost 
to calumniate him. Let us say in di. whisper that the blooded 
horse is carnivorous. 
But I need not call on Plutarch and others to witness to a truth 
clearer than the light of day, and which the poets, those privi- 
leged mortals who divine every thing, have proclaimed for three 
thousand years. The book of Job, composed under a tent in the 
free Arabian desert, overflows with splendid allusions to the chiv- 
alric and warlike temper of the steed. 
The Municipal Council of Athens had to choose between Miner- 
va,, goddess of Wisdom, and Neptune, god of the Waves, who 
warmly disputed the honor of patronizing the new city. The God- 
dess of Peace, invited to display her talents, brings forth from the 
earth the Olive, emblem of difficult but fruitful industry — a pale 
tree, with hard and knotty wood, with fruit acrid and troublesome 
to prepare, but capable of producing light and riches by dint of la- 
