186 METHOD OF HORSEMANSHIP. 



horse's powers^ and above all avoid pushing 

 bravado to the point of wishing to force the 

 animal over obstacles that are beyond his 

 powers. I have known very good leapers 

 that people have succeeded in thus disgust- 

 ing forever, so that no eJBforts could induce 

 them to clear things only half the height of 

 those that at first they leaped with ease. 



Of the iDiaffer.^ — Until now, horsemen 

 have maintained that the nature of each 

 horse permits of only a limited number of 

 movements, and that, if there are some that 

 can be brought to execute a piaffer high 

 and elegant, or low and precipitate, there 

 are a great number of them to whom this 

 exercise is forever interdicted. Their con- 

 struction, they say, is opposed to it ; it is, 

 then, nature that has so willed it ; ought we 



* " The piaffer is the horse's raising his legs diagonally 

 as in the trot, but without advancing or receding." — Bau- 

 cher's ^'Dictionaire d' Equitation ^ 



