Who, after following the old course of training, has a right to complain of the degeneracy which he sees in the broken-hearted drudges around him, or, having any feeling, will hesitate in adopting a more humane course, if one be offered? Such a course is submitted to English readers for the first time in this translation of M. Baucher. The harsh bit is entirely cast aside, and the whip and spur are used very sparingly—as means of persuasion only, never as instruments of punishment. Baucher's system is intended to develope the better instincts of the animal, not to punish the vices which we have taught him, in vain efforts to subdue a strength incalculably greater than ours—which by resolute cruelty we have forced him to employ in resisting our unjust demands. Baucher lays it down as an axiom that no horse is naturally vicious, but that his vices are acquired through bad management. One may possess a higher temper than another, to be sure, but spirited horses are those which turn out best under his method of training. The more intelligent the animal, the more capable of instruction—the more frolicksome but the more tractable is his disposition. We all remember "Mayfly," a trick horse at Welch's circus, that could perform anything possible to a horse: he was a pupil of Baucher. But before falling into his skilful hands, this animal was so vicious, that on the race course it was thought necessary to start him from a box, in order to prevent his injuring himself and the other horses. Here there is an instance in which confirmed ill habits were completely eradicated by proper discipline; and how much easier must it be to establish good ones, where we have nothing but pliant ignorance with which to contend. It is not within our limits to enter fully into the different merits of Baucher's treatise. It is sufficient to say that it has been tested, approved and adopted by the most skilful riders of Europe—the late Duc d'Orleans, a more than graceful horseman, having been Baucher's patron until the day of his unfortunate death. The most vigorous and searching inquiries of the government failed to overthrow the system in a single particular; and wherever Baucher was led into argument with his opponents, the mere force of his philosophical reasonings was sufficient to put them down. His book has gone through nine editions in France, and as many in Russia, Germany, Belgium and Holland. The present translation is well executed, in clear comprehensible English; its only defect, if that can be considered one, is, that it is somewhat too idiomatically precise. So little does it smell of the usual vulgarity of the stable, that we are led to believe Baucher has fallen into the hands of a translator of taste and refinement, who not only admires the system for its practical uses, but also for its logical exactness and genial humanity. The work is copiously illustrated with explanatory engravings, and is well printed on good thick paper, as a manual should be. Nothing is wanting, but the extensive circulation which it deserves, to make it useful to equestrians, and beneficial to that much abused animal to which it is devoted.
The Heroes and Martyrs of the Modern Missionary Enterprise, with some Sketches of the Earlier Missionaries, edited by L. E. Smith, with an introduction by Rev. Dr. Sprague, will soon be published by P. Brockett & Co., of Hartford. It will be an octavo of about six hundred pages, with portraits.
The Fine Arts.
Kaulbach's picture of the Destruction of Jerusalem is at last finished, in fresco, upon the walls of the New Museum in Berlin. It is worth a journey thither to see it. Nor is it alone. The other parts of the series of pictures which adorn the great stairway of that edifice, are rapidly advancing to completion. The five broad pilasters, which separate the main pictures, are nearly done, many of the chief figures being finished in color, while others are drawn in their places. They will exhaust the history of the early religious and intellectual development of humanity. The Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Roman religions, are all illustrated with that masterly genius, comprehensiveness and fertility of imagination, for which Kaulbach is without a peer among the artists of the age. Each religion is depicted in the persons of its divinities and early teachers and heroes. Thoroughly to understand the whole scope of these pictures, requires as much learning in the theology and mythology of these antique races as the artist has employed in painting them, not to speak of skill in deciphering allegories; but to be impressed with their wonderful richness, grandeur, and beauty, requires no learning, beyond a true eye and a mind capable of feeling. Besides, these mythological pictures, the symbolical men of history are introduced, such as Moses and Solon. The Grecian mythological part is not yet completed, the artist having reserved that to be done next summer; in it he intends to lay himself out as on a favorite and congenial subject.
The works of Ingres, the eminent French painter, have been published in splendid style by the great house of Didot at Paris.