KESTIVENESS AND VICE. 



" RESTIVENESS " in horses is a thing which I take to be 

 quite distinct from " vice " originally, although the 

 former will often enough merge into the latter, forming a 

 combination profitable to no one, now that poor Mr. 

 Rarey is no more. In fact, according to my notion, a 

 restive horse, like a poet, nascitur ; a vicious one, fit ! A. 

 restive horse wishes to have his own way; like many 

 humans, he is generally amiable when he gets it. He 

 wishes no harm to anyone. ' ' Live and let live " is his 

 motto. When he has had enough exercise he likes to 

 turn home ; and, when allowed to do so, home he will go 

 tout lonnement. Thwart him in his desire, and he is 

 not so particular as he might be as to what form 

 of resistance he adopts. Still, he resists what he 

 takes to be an imposition. He does not, like certain 

 English politicians, pitch into the powers that be 

 merely for the sake of having an argument and trial of 

 strength. But the vicious horse does so. He has no 

 more love for man than " Iconoclast " has for an arch- 

 bishop ; and if the behaviour of the biped does not afford 

 him a casus belli, he is not above making one for himself. 

 What I understand by a restive horse is one who jibs in 

 harness, who stops and turns round on the road, or who 

 sulks and "sets up" when there is a question of his leaving 

 the pleasant company of other horses. (The last habit, in 

 a park hack especially, will occasionally be the means of 

 placing many people at once in the falsest of positions !) 



