98 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
Why SO? Because England is a country where oppression and 
misery reign — a country which a thousand families of barbarian 
blood odiously exploit. In England the conquering race is all — 
the rest of the nation nothing. The English lord esteems his horse 
in proportion to the contempt he bears toward the Saxon and the 
Irishman — inferior races, whom he has conquered with the help 
of his beast. Beware of offending against a single hair of the robe 
of a noble steed in the Britannic estates, you who hold to your 
crowns and your liberty, for the horse is the apanage of the aris- 
tocracy — of the lords — and these lords have declared by their 
law, their horse inviolable and sacred. For example, you may 
permit yourself to knock a man down with your fist — to carry 
your wife to market with a rope round her neck — and to drag in 
the mud of the gutters the unfortunate prostitute, the daughter of 
the poor artisan, wdiom misery has devoted to infamy. The law 
of Great Britain tolerates these peccadillos. 
The English people, which makes no use of the horse, is ex- 
cessively proud of the philanthropy of its lords, which extends, it 
says, even to domestic animals. 
The inviolability of the English horse throws more light on the 
aristocratic institutions of England than all the volumes of Black- 
stone and of Montesquieu. Now the simple inspection of the ani- 
mal will unveil to you the most private features of morals, char- 
acter, and arts in the British physiognomy. 
Were we ignorant that an excessive love of the vertical, and 
aversion to the ellipse, are the two most salient traits of the En- 
glish character, the conduct of this people in regard to the Ara- 
bian horse would have sufficed to demonstrate it. 
The Arabian horse — such as he came from the hands of God — 
was an adorable beast, a harmonious combination of suppleness, 
strength, and lightness, coming immediately after woman and the 
cat in the order of graceful creatures. The curve of his neck and 
of his croup rivaled in purity and delicacy the softest of femi- 
nine curves. 
This curve of the neck had thus been arched like a bow, in 
order that the cavalier might be absolute master of the move- 
ments of his steed, by means of the bridle — cord of the bow — 
