XXXI . 



There have always been in America a few isolated ex- 

 ponents of the high-school of equitation. Very naturally 

 they have as a rule been foreigners, in most cases riding- 

 school teachers, sometimes men stranded on our coasts 

 with no resource but what they had learned in better 

 times at home. In our old regular army there used to 

 be many high -school riders; to-day there are few; the 

 old style has given out with us as it has in England. We 

 are in the era of the practical ; the artistic has been lost 

 sight of. ]S"o doubt this is for the best ; it is our immense 

 American practicality which has taught the world what 

 the doctrine of the greatest good to the greatest number 

 can accomplish. But, stripped of all its artistic qualities, 

 life becomes sadly prosaic ; and no one, I ween, will claim 

 our age of telegraph and telephone, of sixty miles an hour 

 on the rail, and five hundred knots a day at sea, to be an 

 artistic age. When a painter cannot, for love or money, 

 buy colors ^vlucll have not in some measure been adulter- 

 ated, how can he expect his pictures to last ? The old 

 Dutch masters of the fourteenth century still show up in 

 their original colors, as bright and glowing as the day 

 they were laid on. It is a serious question whether any 

 canvas or fresco produced to-day can last two genera- 

 tions. We can indeed build a Brooklyn Bridge, but 

 whom could we select to decorate a Vatican? 



The higii -school rider does not thrive because he fails 

 to appeal to our practical side. He will begin by telling 



