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prepared for battle, we cry, what a scare-crow! A cock-fighter, however, with all the ideas of the pit about him, will conceive, that in this latter state, he is in his greatest beauty; and if his picture be drawn, it must be drawn in this ridiculous manner. often seen it.

I have

Let jockies, and stable-boys, and cock-fighters, keep their own absurd ideas, but let not men, who pretend to see and think for themselves, adopt such ridiculous conceits. In arts, we judge by the rules of art. In nature, we have no criterion but the forms of nature. We criticise a building by the rules of architecture; but in judging of a tree, or a mountain, we judge by the most beautiful forms of each, which nature hath given us. It is thus in other things. From nature alone we have the form of a horse. Should we then seek for beauty in that object, in our own wild conceptions, or recur to the great original from whence we had it? We may be assured, that nature's forms are always the most beautiful; and therefore we should endeavour to correct our ideas by her's. If, however, we cannot give up the point, let us at least be consistent. If we admire a horse without a tail, or a cock without feathers, let us not laugh at the Chinese for admiring the disproportioned foot of his mistress; or at the Indian, for doting on her black teeth, and tattooed cheeks. For myself, I cannot conceive, why it should make a horse more beautiful to take his tail from him, than it would be to clap a tail, as an addition of beauty, to a man. The accidental motion also of the tail gives it peculiar grace; both when the horse moves it himself, and when it waves in the wind. The beautyof it, to an unprejudiced eye, is conspicuous at once; and in all parade, and state-horses, it is acknowledg

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ed: tho' even here there is an attempt made to improve nature by art: the hair must be adorned with ribbons; and the bottom of the tail clipped square, which adds heaviness, and is certainly so far a deformity.

The same absurd notions, which have led men to cut off the tails of horses, have led them also to cut off their ears. I speak not of low grooms, and jockies; we have seen the studs of men of the first fashion, misled probably by their grooms and jockies, producing only cropt-horses.

When a fine horse has wide, lopping ears, as he sometimes has, without spring or motion in them, a man may be tempted to remove the deformity; but to cut a pair of fine ears from the head of a horse, is, if possible, a greater absurdity, than to cut off his tail. Nothing can be alleged in it's defence. The ear neither retards motion, nor flings dirt.

Much of the same ground may be gone over on this subject, which we went over on the last. With regard to the utility of the ear, it is not improbable, that cropping may injure the horse's hearing: there is certainly less concave surface to receive the vibra tions of the air. I have heard it also asserted with great confidence, that this multilation injures his health; for when a horse has lost that pent-house, which nature has given him over his ear, it is reason. able to believe the wind and rain may get in, and give him cold.

Few of the minuter parts of animal nature are more beautiful than the ear of a horse. The contrast of the lines is pleasing; the concavity and the convexity, being generally seen together in the natural turn of the ear. Nor is the proportion of the ear less pleasing. It is contracted at the insertion, swells in the middle, and tapers to a point. The ear of no

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animal is so beautfully proportioned. That of some beasts, especially of the savage kinds, as the lion, and pard, is naturally rounded and has little form. The ears of other animals, as the fox and cat, are poin. ted, short and thick. Those of the cow are round and heavy. The hare and ass's ears are long, and nearly of the same thickness. The dog and swine have flapping ears. The sheep, alone has ears, which may be compared with those of the horse. The ear of the horse receives great beauty also from it's col our, as well as form. The ears of bay and grey horses are generally tipped with black, which melts into the colour of the head. But the ear of the horse receives it's greatest beauty from motion. The ear of no animal has that vibrating power. The ears of a spirited horse are continually in motion; quivering and darting their sharp points towards every object which is presented: and the action is still more beautiful, when the ears are so well set on, that the points are drawn nearly together. But it is not only the quivering motion of the horse's ears, that we admire; we admire them also as the interpreters of his passions, particularly of fear, which some denomin ate courage; and of anger, or malice. The former he expresses by darting them forward; the latter, by laying them back.

Tho' nothing I can say on the subject, I am well persuaded, can weigh against the authority of grooms, and jockies, so as to make a general reform; yet if, here and there, a small party could be raised in opposition to this strange custom, it might, in time, perhaps obtain fashion on it's side." This reasoning will apply with equal force against the mutilation of dogs and other animals.

OF TRAVELLING POST. There is another spe cies of inhumanity, which all ranks, except the poor and indigent, stand chargeable with; which is the custom of travelling post. How often the trembling chaise or coach-horse, panting for breath, every limb shattered by the hardness of the roads, arrives in the inn-yard, spent to the last under extreme exertion. His sides wreathed or bleeding with the lashes or spurs of his unfeeling driver, and every muscle and tendon quivering with convulsive agony ! In vain is he offered food; his mouth is parched with thirst and dust. He cannot eat, and water is denied, because it would endanger his existence, which is to be preserved for future torment. In such cases, it not unfrequently has happened that the postillion has been tipped an extraordinary gratuity, for which he would, at any time, flog the horses till they nearly expired under torture and fatigue. Inhuman custom! barbarous propensity! the dreadful effect of polished manners! Such is the misery that a boasted demi-god bestows on his inferiors. On a smaller scale of cruelty, a horse is frequently lashed with the most savage fury, by a gentleman's coachman, during the time of moving the length of a street, for no other reason than that he has, accidentally, stumbled, trod in a hole, or slipped through bad shoeing, and frequently ignorant for what he is corrected.

The following case of cruelty was in the year 1799, proved on oath by Lord Robert Seymour, before the magistrates in Bow-street. His lordship stated, "That he saw in Oxford-street, a coachman unmercifully whipping, from his box, two half starved and perfectly exhausted horses, which were endeavouring to draw from the channel an empty hackney coach. The driver, after so treating the horses, alighted, and

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seizing the near, or left hand horse, beat him for a considerable time with the butt-end of his whip; he then proceeded to the right hand, or off horse, the outer shoulder of which was perfectly raw and excoriated, exposing a sort of pipe hole in it's centre, which hole appeared to have been formed by a rowel. The coachman then proceeded to punch repeatedly the raw surface of the shoulder, and deliberately worked the butt-end of the whip into the said rowel or pipe-hole. His lordship intreated him to desist, reminding him of the utter incapacity, on the part of the horses, to move. The coachman's reply was, "If he, his lordship, interfered any further on the part of the horses, he would kill them with a knife which he had in bis pocket!"

Lord Erskine said, in his speech to the House of Peers, "I can assert, with the greatest sincerity, that nothing has ever excited in my mind greater disgust, than to observe, what we all of us are obliged to see every day, horses panting What do I say? literally dying under the scourge, when on looking into the chaises, we see them carrying to and from London, men and women, to whom or to others it can be of no possible signification whether they arrive one day sooner or later, and sometimes indeed whether they ever arrive.

THE BUYING UP OF HORSES, is an evil which exists under the deliberate calculation of intolerable avarice. This practice takes place at a time when past their strength, from old age or disease, upon the computation of how many days of torture and oppression they are capable of living under, so as to return a profit, with the addition of flesh and skin, when brought to one of the numerous houses appropriated for the slaughter of horses. If this practice,