INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 5 



great Continental cities, and many of these are there 

 sold at prices perfectly remunerative to the dealers, but 

 which are much lower than animals of equally good 

 figure and proportions command with ease in the Eng- 

 lish market. This was for a time a puzzle to the Con- 

 tinentals, and even to some amateur dealers, who made 

 bad speculations in consequence. By -and -by it was 

 discovered that a great majority of these splendid 

 animals were either more or less restive, or at least 

 " difficult," as the phrase goes. Being frequently pur- 

 chased by military officers of superior rank, they were 

 naturally put into the riding-schools, where they gave 

 so much trouble that many professionals were led to 

 believe that English horses were incapable of any high 

 degree of school-training. Others who were more judi- 

 cious found it impossible to reconcile the well-known 

 docility of the English breed with the fractiousness 

 and intractability of these exported specimens, and 

 came to the very sound conclusion that the fault lay, 

 not in the breed, but in the previous injudicious hand- 

 ling of these individuals. Baucher, the French riding- 

 master, founded his great reputation, which, by the 

 way, has been much exaggerated, on his successful 

 conversion of the celebrated Partisan an English horse 

 that was sold for a song, because nobody could manage 

 him into a first-rate and most docile school-horse. 

 Some of the Germans, however, decided the question 

 in a still more positive manner, by buying young high- 

 bred horses in England that had never been backed ; 

 and Seeger, Von Oeynhausen, and other first-rate au- 

 thorities, now all state that English horses are just 

 as capable of high training as all others, and more so 

 than the Arabians, who have a very peculiar trot. 



