TEACHING THE YOVXG IDEA. \\% 



aristocratic self-possession " of their race, will go anywhere 

 and do anything. What we have to do is to teach them how 

 to play the game like gentlemen and not like butcher-boys. 



Lads such as these are frequently puzzled as to the style 

 of seat they should assume on horseback. If they take 

 upon themselves the studied manege teaching, they are 

 alarmed at being chaffed for aping the military school — a 

 no very bad school as I have endeavoured to show. If 

 they shorten their stirrups, double themselves up "all-of-a 

 heap," and turn their toes out, they are often charged, and 

 rightly so, with riding like tailors. When I see a lad with his 

 shoulders up to his ears, elbows stuck out, leaning over the 

 pommel of the saddle as if he wanted to go a bit faster than 

 the horse, his heels in, one rein held tighter than the other, 

 handling his horse's mouth roughly, and urging him beyond 

 the true verge of his pace, I dub that lad a butcher-boy. 



The great difficulty is to ride like a true sportsman, avoid- 

 ing any outre characteristic. It is utterly impossible to 

 adhere to any strict rule as to the correct seat for general 

 horsemanship. The seat must be varied in accordance with 

 the circumstances in which the rider is placed, but under all 

 conditions, it can be graceful and easy. The perfect horse- 

 man can appropriate to himself every style of seat. The 

 only man I ever saw who could ride well over a big country 

 with the then prevailing military seat — long stirrups and 

 sitting on the " fork " — was the late Earl of Cardigan. At the 

 head of the nth Hussars the leader of '' The Six Hundred " 

 was perfect in the saddle, as military riding was then under- 

 stood, but his lordship's seat with the Quorn was strangely 

 out of place. The same seat cannot be preserved on any 

 and every horse. All affectation of a peculiar style of riding 

 on ordinary occasions is to be eschewed ; it is bad form. 



I have seen a man steal down Rotten Row slightly raised 



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