In a night of storm, I have seen a form, and the figure was a giant, And his eye was bent on the Cossack’s tent, and his look was all defiant. Kingly his crest, and toward the West with his battleaxe he pointed; And the form I saw was—ATTILA—of this earth the scourge anointed: From the Cossack’s camp let the horseman’s tramp the coming crash announce; Let the vulture whet its beak sharp set on the carrion field to pounce! And fiercely neigh, &c. What boots old Europe’s boasted fame, on which she sets reliance, When the North shall launch its avalanche on her works of art and science? Hath she not wept her cities swept by our herds of swarming stallions, And tower and arch crushed in the march of our barbarous battalions? Can we not wield our fathers’ shield, the same war-hatchet handle? Do our blades want length, or the reapers strength, for the harvest of the Vandal? Then fiercely neigh, my charger grey! Oh! thy chest is broad and ample, And thy hoofs shall prance o’er the fields of France, and the pride of her heroes trample. The horses of the Cossacks, bred on the Steppes, though far inferior to those of the Circassians, are, nevertheless, a serviceable race, strong-boned, well-limbed, and with a good proportion of blood; though their forms are angular and inelegant, and their necks ewed, they are fast and hardy. The Cossacks, like all equestrian nations, ride with very short stirrups, and they use only the snaffle bridle.