When Xenophon wrote his rural treatises, (including the [Greek:  Kunaegetikos],) he was living in that delightful region of country which lies westward of the mountains of Arcadia, looking toward the Ionian Sea.  Here, too, he wrote the story of his retreat, and his wanderings among the mountains of Armenia; here he talked with his friends, and made other such symposia as he has given us a taste of at the house of Callias the Athenian; here he ranged over the whole country-side with his horses and dogs:  a stalwart and lithe old gentleman, without a doubt; able to mount a horse or to manage one, with the supplest of the grooms; and with a keen eye, as his book shows, for the good points in horse-flesh.  A man might make a worse mistake than to buy a horse after Xenophon’s instructions, to-day.  A spavin or a wind-gall did not escape the old gentleman’s eye, and he never bought a horse without proving his wind and handling him well about the mouth and ears.  His grooms were taught their duties with nice speciality:  the mane and tail to be thoroughly washed; the food and bed to be properly and regularly prepared; and treatment to be always gentle and kind.

Exception may perhaps be taken to his doctrine in regard to stall-floors.  Moist ones, he says, injure the hoof:  “Better to have stones inserted in the ground close to one another, equal in size to their hoofs; for such stalls consolidate the hoofs of those standing on them, beside strengthening the hollow of the foot.”

After certain directions for rough riding and leaping, he advises hunting through thickets, if wild animals are to be found.  Otherwise, the following pleasant diversion is named, which I beg to suggest to sub-lieutenants in training for dragoon-service:—­“It is a useful exercise for two horsemen to agree between themselves, that one shall retire through all sorts of rough places, and as he flees, is to turn about from time to time and present his spear; and the other shall pursue, having javelins blunted with balls, and a spear of the same description, and whenever he comes within javelin-throw, he is to hurl the blunted weapon at the party retreating, and whenever he comes within spear-reach, he is to strike him with it.”

Putting aside his horsemanship, in which he must have been nearly perfect, there was very much that was grand about the old Greek,—­very much that makes us strangely love the man, who, when his soldiers lay benumbed under the snows on the heights of Armenia, threw off his general’s coat, or blanket, or what not, and set himself resolutely to wood-chopping and to cheering them.  The farmer knew how.

Such men win battles.  He has his joke, too, with Cheirisophus, the Lacedaemonian, about the thieving propensity of his townspeople, and invites him, in virtue of it, to steal a difficult march upon the enemy.  And Cheirisophus grimly retorts upon Xenophon, that Athenians are said to be great experts in stealing the public money, especially the high officers.  This sounds home-like!  When I come upon such things, I forget the parasangs and the Taochians and the dead Cyrus, and seem to be reading out of American newspapers.