with open jaws the moment of thy fate,
no better fate attends his public race;
his life is misery, and his end disgrace.
Then freely bear thy burden to the mill;
obey but one short law,—thy driver's will.
O barbarous men! your cruel breasts aswage;
why vent ye on the gen'rous steed your rage?
does not his service earn your daily bread?
your wives, your children, by his labours fed!
The Asiatics, in general, but particularly the Arabians, have been long renowned for their kind and merciful treatment of beasts, rarely or never correcting their horses, either with whip or spur; but treat them as animals which they perceive are endowed with a large portion of the reasoning faculty.
Some of the most beautiful passages, by ancient writers, are those in which the animal creation is mentioned. Few readers have escaped tears at the affectionate address of Mezentius to his horse, 10 Æu. 861, which is one of the most pathetic strokes in Virgil. No part of Homer is more remarkable than the art with which that great poet rivets attention in favour of the horse of Achilles, in opposition to poetical truth; yet such is the beauty of the passage that the frigid propriety of fact is lost in the magic of the poetry.
In Jacob Guther de Jure Manium, published in 1671, there are some curious instances to be found of the fondness which the ancients had for their animals, and which they carried to a most ridiculous excess.
Alexander the great, had funeral rites performed on the death of his horse Bucephalus.—Pliny, lib. viii,
