SEATS. 77 



has but one hand to ride with. Much of the success 

 of starting depends on the rider throwing his weight 

 forward at the proper moment, and not overdoing it, as 

 good riders well know. The bridle is a much greater 

 difficulty with the race-horse than the saddle, but this 

 we must reserve for the second part of our book. 



The Hunting Seat. — This is a difficult subject, and 

 one that cannot be treated dogmatically. Hunting is 

 well done in a great variety of forms, and then money 

 is, to most hunting men, a matter of secondary import- 

 ance. The great majority only require their horses '7o 

 go f when they are done up they can buy others, and 

 so on. Race-riders mount for other people's pleasure, 

 and large sums of money are at stake : hence the 

 severe discipline and the carefiilly-considered system of 

 i'iding. The preserv^ation of the horse, too, is a great con- 

 sideration : the hunting man rides for his own pleasure, 

 and is only answerable to himself for his expenditure 

 of horse-flesh. 



The author of the ' Handy Horse-Book,' remarking 

 at p. 99 on the great difference in speed between Eng- 

 lish and Irish fox-hunting, says " that the sound prin- 

 ciples of hunting are repeatedly sacrificed to the un- 

 natural speed to which hounds are now forced." There 

 are no doubt, many good reasons to account for this. 

 Most men care more for " the spin" than for the hunt- 

 ing itself, which affiards merely a pretext. Perhaps, too 

 English hunting is less a pursuit of the fox than a des- 

 perate endeavour to distance Thackeray's all-pervading 

 snob, which seems, however, not always to succeed ; for 

 as "Magenta" says, in the paragraph of this book quoted 

 above, "the hounds are so forced as to overrun the 



