descriptive of the four great monarchies of the world, viz.. the Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman. The head of the Roman empire the emperors of Germany affect to be, and in compliment to Rodolphus, the history is deduced (by a representation in the several compartments, of which there are more than one hundred and thirty of select and remarkable events immediately connected with it) from the destruction of the city of Troy, to the time of the then emperor himself.

This chair was thirty years in making, and is said to have cost forty thousand pounds. The four figures missing at the bottom of the chair, some assert were never there, and that it was originally in this respect incomplete; but this does not seem probable, and can only be conjecture.

This chair was the property of the celebrated Count Tassin, who was ambassador from the court of Sweden to the English court; his son, Gustavus Brander, Esq., bought it for eighteen hundred guineas, who sold it to the Earl of Radnor for six hundred guineas.-Cabinet of Curiosities.

REMARKABLE ANIMALS.

THE HORSE.

THE noblest conquest ever made by man over the brute creation, is the reduction of this spirited and haughty animal, which shares with him the fatigues of war, and the glory of victory. Equally intrepid as his master, the horse sees the danger, and encounters death with bravery; inspired at the clash of arms, he loves it, and pursues the enemy with the same ardour and resolution. He feels pleasure also in the chase and in tournaments; in the course he is all fire, but equally tractable and courageous he does not give way to his impetuosity, and knows how to check his natural and fiery temper. He not only submits to the arm which guides him, but seems to consult the desires of his rider; and always obedient to the in

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pression he receives, he presses on or stops, at his rider's pleasure. The horse is a creature which renounces his very being for the service of man, whose will he even knows how to anticipate, and execute by the promptitude of his movements: he gives himself up without reserve, refuses nothing, exerts himself beyond his strength, and often dies sooner than disobey.

Such is the horse, whose talents and natural qualities art has improved, and who with care has been tutored for the service of man: his education commences with the loss of his liberty, and is finished by constraint.—The slavery or servitude of horses is so universal, and so ancient, that we rarely see them in their natural state. They are always covered with harness when at work, and no wholly free from their bonds even in time of rest. If they are sometimes suffered to range in the fields, they always bear about them marks of servitude, and frequently external impressions of labour and of pain: the mouth is deformed by the wrinkles occasioned by the bit, the sides scarred with wounds inflicted by the spurs, and the hoofs are pierced with nails. The attitude of the body, constrained by the impression of habitual shocks, from which they would be delivered in vain, as they would not be more at liberty. Even those whose slavery is the most gentle, who are only fed and broke for luxury and magnificence, and whose golden chains only serve to satisfy the vanity of their masters, are still more dishonoured by the elegance of their trappings, and by the plaits of their manes, than by the iron shoes of their feet.

These beautiful and noble creatures are never seen to leave our dwellings for the forests and deserts; but, on the contrary, express the greatest desire of returning to their stables, though all they meet with there is a gross food, always the same, and generally measured out rather by parsimony than their craving appetites; but the kind treatment they generally meet with compensates for their other losses. When spent with fatigue, the place of rest is a place of delight; they smell it from afar; they find it out in the midst of the most crowded cities, and seem, in every thing, to prefer servitude to freedom. The habits they have contracted become a kind of second nature,-horses left in the woods having been known to keep a continual

neighing, in order to be heard, and at the voice of man have ran to him with transport; and, amidst a rich variety of agreeable nourishment, while deprived of human society, they have been known to lose their flesh, and to become strangely emaciated in a very short time.—BurFON'S Natural History.

It is recorded of the celebrated Howard, that his old horses remained, after they were incapable of labour, the happy pensioners on his bounty for the rest of their lives. These faithful creatures enjoyed themselves in perfect freedom from toil, and in full supply of all that old age requires, several fields having, by their generous master, been appropriated for that purpose. Each of these fields had a comfortable shed, to which the inhabitants could resort in the bad weather, and were sure of finding the rigours of the season softened by a well-furnished crib of the best hay, and a manger either of bran, or corn ground, or some other nourishing food. Chelsea Hospital is not better accommodated.-PRATT's Gleanings.

The following fine panegyric on the horse is taken from a beautiful neglected poem of the immortal Shakspeare:

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girts he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,
Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven's thunder:
The iron bit he crushes 'tween his teeth,
Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-pricked, his braided hanging mane,
Upon his compassed crest now stands on end,
His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he lend:

His eye, which glistens scornfully like fire,
Shows his hot courage, and his high desire
Sometimes he trots, as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty and modest pride:
Anon be rears upright, curvets, and leaps,
As who should say, Lo! thus my strength is triee;
And thus I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing bv

What recketh he his rider's angry stir,
His flattering holla, or his stand, I say?
What cares he now for curb, or pricking spur?
For rich caparisons, or trappings gay?

He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.

THE ELEPHANT.

Peaceful beneath primeval trees that cast
Their ample shade o'er Niger's yellow stream,
And where the Ganges rolls his sacred wave,
Or mid the central depth of blackening woods
High rais'd in solemn theatre around,
Leans the huge elephant.

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THE elephant, the largest of all quadrupeds, and an animal which, in many respects, merits our attention, is a native of India. When at full growth, it measures from seventeen to twenty feet in height from the ground to the highest part of the back, which is six or seven feet broad, and somewhat protuberant. The elephant has a round thick body, a large short head, and a short neck; a long proboscis, snout, or trunk, hanging down almost to the ground; a little narrow mouth, with two long tusks ceeding from the upper jaw, one on each side of the proboscis; besides four strong grinders in each jaw; small piercing eyes, and large flat ears. Its legs are round and thick, supporting its vast weight like so many columns; and its feet are short, those before being broader and rounder than those behind, each of them defended by four hoofs. Its skin is very hard, especially on the breast; its colour is generally dusky or black; but there is a white species, not so common as the others.

The proboscis, or trunk, of the elephant is of such a structure, that he can extend or contract, dilate, raise or depress, and bend or twist it about at pleasure. Sometimes he makes it of a concave, sometimes of a convex form; now doubles it, again expands it, and, in short, turns it round every way with surprising agility. By this member he takes in his meat and drink, and conveys them to his mouth; by this he takes up a vast weight, levels trees, and makes use of it as a hand upon all occasions; and it likewise serves for the purposes of smelling and respiration.

It is really wonderful to observe how nimbly the elephant moves his trunk considering its bulk, being six o

seven feet long, and three feet or more in circumference at its origin, but growing smaller from thence to its extremity. The shortness of the elephant's neck is compensated by the length of this member, which Dr. Derham says is so admirably contrived, so curiously wrought, and applied with so much agility and readiness by that unwieldy creature to its several occasions, that he thinks it a manifest instance of the Creator's wisdom.

History affords us several instances of the love, fidelity, and gratitude, of the elephant, which are very surprising. Ælian relates that when Porus, King of India, was subdued by Alexander the Great, he was wounded with several darts, which the elephant he rode upon pulled out of his body with his proboscis; and when he perceived his master fainting by the loss of blood, gradually leaned himself down till he fell flat upon the ground, that his master might receive no harm by alighting. Athenæus

mentions the gratitude of an elephant to a woman that had done him some service, and used to lay her child near him when it was very young; for, the mother dying, the elephant was so fond of the child, that he showed great uneasiness when it was taken out of his sight, and would not eat his food unless the nurse laid the child in the cradle between his feet, but then he would eat heartily. When the child slept, he chased away the flies with his proboscis; and when it cried, he would toss or rock the cradle till it fell asleep.

An elephant in Adsmeer, which often passed through the market, as he went by a certain herb-woman, always received from her a mouthful of greens: at length he was seized with a periodical fit of rage, broke his fetters, and, running through the market, put the crowd to flight, and among others this woman, who, in her haste, forgot a little child she had with her. The animal, recollecting the spot where his benefactress usually sat, took up the infant gently in his trunk, and placed it in safety on a stall before 2 neighbouring house.

Another elephant, in his periodical madness, killed his keeper; upon which the wife took her two children, and flung them before the elephant, saying, " Now you have destroyed the father, you may as well put an end to their lives and mine." The creature instantly relented, placed