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some years since, have sustained no alteration. The grand mamgc is 

 an antique and cutr.hrous superfluity, which ought to be laid aside, or 

 exhibited only in a depository of heavy carriages, and heavy- starched 

 apparel. They are all equally incongruous with the rational simplicity 

 of modern taste. Berenger says, it is impossible to find a universal Horse, 

 or one excelling in all the numerous actions of the school. For, 

 to comi)letethe full-dressed Horse, requirtns no inconsiderable portion of 

 his life, and the severity of action in those ingenious and shewy, rather 

 than useful feats, which he is taught to perform, constantly exjioses 

 him to the risk of dangerous strains in his reins and hinder quarters. 

 Indeed, no labourof the Horse can be so severe and distressing, as his 

 full lesson in the school, of circling, sideling, advancing, retreating, 

 vaulting, kicking, rearing, and the residue of those exhausting feats, in 

 which he rivals his fellow performer on the stage, who leaps, vaults, 

 tumbles, and dances, upon the slack rope. 



The late Charles Hughes, and other riding-masters, have acknow- 

 ledged, that a thoroughly-managed Horse is spoiled for other purposes, 

 and Adams confesses, that the managed style of riding, is unsuitable 

 to speedy trotting or galloping'. To dress a Horse perfectly, not only 

 is his mouth too much weakened, as has been shewn, but his body is so 

 united, or trussed together, his haunches so much drawn under him, 

 and he is so used to lift up his fore quarters, that his progressive powers 

 are spent in the air, and he can no longer project them with his natural 

 rapidity, in a horizontal direction. In plain English, he loses the greater 

 part of that qualification so extremely valuable in England, his speed; 

 paas aukwardly with his fore feet, maugre all his airs and graces, and 

 cannot put forth his science-shackled limbs, without present pain, and 

 early fatigue. He is suppled indeed, but he has acquired that kind of 

 su])pleness which gives him the action of a crab. 



Again, respecting the managed seat, however grand and chivalrous it 

 may appear in a procession, on which I shall hold no argument, surely 

 its most strenuous advocates must acknowledge, that it is equally ludi- 

 crous upon any common occasion ; a man with his hollow back, promi- 

 nent belly and chest, braced shoulders, stiff neck, straight and stiff" legs 

 and thighs, and mounted on a cock-horse, on the ordinary occasions 



of 



