GOOD AND BAD HOKSEMANSHIP. 113 



than on foot. Kotten Row is the ride of idleness and 

 pleasure, but there is a great deal of business done in 

 sober walks and slow canters, commercial, political, and 

 matrimonial. 



For a young lady not to be able to ride with a lover is 

 a great loss ; not to be able to ride with a young husband 

 a serious privation. 



The first element for enjoying horse exercise is good 

 horsemanship. Colonel Greenwood says very truly : 

 " Good riding is worth acquiring by those whose pleasure 

 or business it is to ride, because it is soon and easily 

 acquired, and, when acquired, it becomes habitual; and 

 it is as easy, nay, much more easy, and infinitely more 

 safe, than bad riding." " Good riding will last through 

 age, sickness, and decrepitude, but bad riding will last 

 only as long as youth, health, and strength supply 

 coin-age ; for good riding is an affair of skill, but bad 

 ridinr/ is an affair of courage.' 1 



A bold bad rider must not be merely brave ; he must 

 be fool-hardy ; for he is perpetually in as much danger 

 as a blind man among precipices. 



In riding, as inmost other things, danger is for the timid 

 and the unskilful. The skilful rider, when apparently 

 courting danger in the field, deserves no more credit for 

 courage than for sitting in an arm-chair, and the un- 

 skilful no more the imputation of timidity for backward- 

 ness than if without practice he declined to perform on 

 the tight-rope. Depend upon it, the bold bad rider is 

 the hero. 



There is nothing heroic in good riding, when dis- 

 sected. The whole thing is a matter of detail a collec- 

 tion of trifles and its principles are so simple in 

 theory and so easy in practice that they are despised. 



It is an accomplishment that may, to a certain extent, 



i 



