136 EQUESTRIAN AIRS 



In tliis style ride both the statesman and the swell, the 

 banker and, when he can afford it, his clerk. And very 

 much so rode the Englishman of half a century ago. I 

 have of late years heard excellent English horsemen brush 

 aside all reference to the high -school of equitation as 

 worthy only of a snob. But there were some very decent 

 "snobs" in England back in the thirties, when celebrated 

 members of both Houses, the leaders of fashion, the most 

 noted generals — the very heroes, indeed, who had beaten 

 Boney — and every one pretending to be in the social swim 

 would go }3rancing up and down the Row, passaging, 

 piaffing, traversing, to the admiration of all beholders. 

 The brave men who served under Wellington and Nelson 

 were not cut on the tweed- suit pattern by any means. 

 Even the M. F. H. fell into the trick of it in the park. 

 They were not called snobs then ; the initial letter was 

 dropped ; and when a Briton slurs at the better education 

 of the horse to-day, he casts a stone at his own ancestry 

 over the shoulder of the lover of the high-school. I shall 

 recur to this high-school business. 



The first thing; in our Mexican friend which strikes us 

 is his horse. This is not the bronco of the plains. He is 

 evidently imported from Spain, or lately bred from im- 

 ported stock without that long struggle for existence 

 which has given the pony his wonderful endurance and 

 robbed him of every mark of external beauty. Here we 

 revert to the original Moorish type. The high and long- 

 maned crest, arched Avith pride, the full red nostril, large 

 and docile eye, rounded barrel, high croup, tail set on and 

 carried to match the head, clean legs, high action, and per- 

 fect poise. How he fills our artistic eye, how we dwell 

 upon him ! — until we remember that performance comes 

 first, beauty after, and that the English thorough-bred, 

 which can give a distance to the best of this exquisite 



