LADY FOXHUNTERS 293 



indeed that is one of the palpable inconveniences of 

 ladies hunting, for it is almost a point of honour for 

 men to go over what ladies have taken. If it were 

 not their ignorance when horses have done enough, 

 and their great desire for pace, we would rather be a 

 woman's horse than a man's. Women have much 

 finer, and more delicate hands than men, and they 

 never fight or bully their horses as men do — neither do 

 they ever pull them into their leaps — by which means 

 nine-tenths of the annual falls are procured. A horse 

 worthy the name of a hunter would very seldom fall 

 or make a mistake if left to himself. Let a man 

 watch a loose horse, or even a raw foal, following 

 the field, and see how safely, slowly, and easily, they 

 go over places that some men and some horses 

 terrify each other into believing are all but impractic- 

 able. Who has not seen horses throw arches, like 

 the dome of St. Paul's, over places little wider than 

 water furrows ? 



There was a neat little jaundiced backed book 

 published a few years ago by Moxon, of Dover-street, 

 called " Hints on Horsemanship to a Nephew and 

 Niece, or Common Sense and Common Errors 

 in Common Riding, by an officer of the House- 

 hold Brigade of Cavalry," which, barring the officer 

 authorship, always an objectionable paternity in our 

 mind, gives a greenhorn as much instruction as it is 

 possible to derive from books, and contains, besides 

 sundry instructions about how to get on and how to 

 get off, the following very sensible observations on 

 the subject of pace — " I cannot finish," says he, 

 " without one word to deprecate a piece of inhumanity, 

 practised as much, perhaps more, by ladies than 

 gentlemen — the riding the horse fast on hard ground " 

 (our author might have included our old friends the 

 Grooms, for whoever saw one that did not select the 

 centre of the road, and how many do we see clattering 

 along making up for lost time, seeming as though 



