CHAPTER V. 



HAND. 



WHAT is it ? Intellect, nerve, sympathy, confidence, 

 skill ? None of these can be said to constitute this 

 quality ; rather it is a combination of all, with some- 

 thing superinduced that can only be called a magnetic 

 affinity between the aggressive spirit of man and the 

 ductile nature of the beast. 



" He spurred the old horse, and he held him tight, 

 And leaped him out over the wall," 



says Kingsley, in his stirring ballad of " The Knight's 

 Last Leap at Alten-ahr ; " and Kingsley, an excellent 

 rider himself, thus described exactly how the animal 

 should have been put at its formidable fence. Most 

 poets would have let their horse's head go the loose 

 rein is a favourite method of making play in literature 

 and a fatal refusal must have been the result. The 

 German Knight, however, whose past life seems to have 



