Comparative Power. 57 



quietly plays a game of chess or whist ? Or to 

 use a more nearly equal simile, may not a man 

 find as great enjoyment in a skilled game of ten- 

 nis, as in the violent rushes of foot-ball, where 

 two hundred and twenty pounds of mere blubber 

 will assuredly bear down all the prowess and apt- 

 ness of his own say one hundred and forty ? It 

 is as certain that the pleasure of riding a trained 

 horse is greater than that of merely sitting a vig- 

 orously moving untrained one, as that the delight 

 of intellectual study exceeds the excitement of 

 trashy reading. Omne ignotuin pro magnifico 

 seems not to be uniformly true, for riders unfa- 

 miliar with the training of the High School al- 

 most as invariably run down its methods, as self- 

 made business men are apt to discountenance a 

 college education as a preliminary discipline for 

 the struggles of life. 



It is a fact that no man who has once been a 

 School-rider ever abandons either the knowledge 

 he has gained or its constant practice. No one 

 can underrate the pleasure of simple motion upon 

 a vigorous horse. But the School-rider has this 

 in equal degree with the uneducated horseman, 

 coupled with a feeling of control and power and 

 ability to perform which the mere man on horse- 

 back never attains. Moreover, all the powers of 

 the School-rider's horse are within the grasp of 

 his hand ; and that the powers of the high-strung 



