BREAKING. 18\ 
‘independence,’ that although he will allow almost any quadruped, even 
wolves and lions, to approach within a certain distance, yet the moment 
he sees a man, though on horseback, he instinctively turns his tail towards 
him, and, when followed, gallops away. 
“ Tf, consequently, by the triumph of reason over instinct, he be caught, 
saddled, and if all of a sudden, to his vast astonishment, he finds sitting 
astride his back, with a cigar in his mouth, the very human being he has 
always been avoiding, his first and almost only feeling is that of fear, and 
accordingly, if he be retained by the bridle, instantaneously, by a series of 
jumps on all four legs, he makes impromptu his first hurried, untaught, 
unpractised effort to dislocate a rider. But if, instead of being as it were 
invited to perform these unsophisticated antics, he be allowed, or rather 
by whip and severe spurs, be propelled to do what he most ardently 
desires, namely, run away, his power of resistance is over, and his subjec- 
tion inevitable. For at the top of his speed, just as when swimming, a 
horse can neither rear, kick, nor plunge, and accordingly at his best pace 
he proceeds on his sure road to ruin, until not only all his wind is 
pumped out of him, but after that, until twisted hide-thong and sharp 
iron have converted his terror of man into an ardent desire to be obedient 
to his will. In fact, like a small nation that has unsuccessfully been con- 
tending against a great one, he wishes to put an end to the horrors of 
war, and to sue for the blessings of peace. 
“2. If a domestic horse that has never been broken in be suddenly 
saddled and mounted, the rider has greater difficulties to encounter than 
those just described : for the animal is not only gifted by nature with all 
the propensities of the wild horse to reject man, but, from being better 
fed, he has greater strength to indulge in them; besides which he 
enjoys the immense advantage of being in a civilized, or, in plainer terms, 
an enclosed country. Accordingly, instead cf being forced to run away, 
his rider is particularly afraid lest he should do so, simply because he 
knows that the remedy which would cure the wild horse, would probably 
kill him. In fact, the difference to the rider between an open and an 
enclosed field of battle is exactly that which a naval officer feels in 
scudding in a gale of wind out of sight of land, and in being caught 
among sandbanks and rocks in a narrow channel. 
“ 3. Of all descriptions of horses wild and tame, by far the most diffi- 
cult to ride is that young British thorough-bred colt of two or three years 
old that has been regularly ‘broken in’ by himself, without giving the 
slightest warning, to jump away sideways, spin round, and at the same 
moment kick off his rider. This feat is a beautiful and well-arranged 
combination of nature and of art. Like the pugilistic champion of 
England—Tom Sayers—he is a professional performer, gifted with so 
much strength and activity, and skilful in so many quick, artful tricks 
and dodges, that any country practitioner that comes to deal with him is 
no sooner up than down, to rise from his mother earth with a vague, 
bewildered, incoherent idea as to what had befallen him. or how he 
got there.’ 
“Tf a horse of this description and a wild one in his own country were 
to be mounted there simultaneously, each by an equally good rider, both 
the quadrupeds probably at the same moment would be seen to run away; 
the Briton for ever, to gain his liberty; the other quadruped, just as 
surely, to lose it!” 
Nothing can better convey to the reader the difficulties which the 
English horse-breaker has to contend with, than this extract from the 
