Job sets forth his strength, his beauty, his majesty, the panting of his nostril, the pawing of his hoof, and his enthusiasm for the battle.  What Rosa Bonheur did for the cattle, and what Landseer did for the dog, Job, with mightier pencil, does for the horse.  Eighty-eight times does the Bible speak of him.  He comes into every kingly procession and into every great occasion and into every triumph.  It is very evident that Job and David and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and John were fond of the horse.  He came into much of their imagery.  A red horse—­that meant war; a black horse—­that meant famine; a pale horse—­that meant death; a white horse—­that meant victory.

As the Bible makes a favorite of the horse, the patriarch and the prophet and the evangelist and the apostle, stroking his sleek hide, and patting his rounded neck, and tenderly lifting his exquisitely formed hoof, and listening with a thrill to the champ of his bit, so all great natures in all ages have spoken of him in encomiastic terms.  Virgil in his Georgics almost seems to plagiarize from the description of Job.  The Duke of Wellington would not allow any one irreverently to touch his old war-horse, Copenhagen, on whom he had ridden fifteen hours without dismounting at Waterloo; and when old Copenhagen died, his master ordered a military salute fired over his grave.  John Howard showed that he did not exhaust all his sympathies in pitying the human race, for when sick he writes home:  “Has my old chaise-horse become sick or spoiled?”

But we do not think that the speed of the horse should be cultured at the expense of human degradation.  Horse-races, in olden times, were under the ban of Christian people, and in our day the same institution has come up under fictitious names, and it is called a “Summer Meeting,” almost suggestive of positive religious exercises.  And it is called an “Agricultural Fair,” suggestive of everything that is improving in the art of farming.  But under these deceptive titles are the same cheating and the same betting, the same drunkenness and the same vagabondage and the same abominations that were to be found under the old horse-racing system.

I never knew a man yet who could give himself to the pleasures of the turf for a long reach of time, and not be battered in morals.  They hook up their spanking team, and put on their sporting-cap, and light their cigar, and take the reins, and dash down the road to perdition.  The great day at Saratoga, and Long Branch, and Cape May, and nearly all the other watering-places, is the day of the races.  The hotels are thronged, nearly every kind of equipage is taken up at an almost fabulous price, and there are many respectable people mingling with jockeys, and gamblers, and libertines, and foul-mouthed men and flashy women.  The bar-tender stirs up the brandy-smash.  The bets run high.  The greenhorns, supposing all is fair, put in their money soon enough to lose it.  Three weeks before the race takes place the struggle is decided, and the men in the secret know on which steed to bet their money.  The two men on the horses riding around long before arranged who shall beat.