FIRST SUBSCRIPTION LECTURES. 19 



having omitted the precautions of gagging this wild 

 beast with the wooden bit, which forms one of the 

 vignettes of this book, he turned round suddenly, 

 while the tamer was soothing his legs, caught his 

 shoulder in his mouth, and would have made an end of 

 the Rarey system if assistance had not been at hand 

 in the shape of Mr. Goodenough and a pitchfork. 



Intense enthusiasm was created in Paris by the con- 

 quest of Stafford, but 250 francs was too large a sum 

 to found a long subscription list in a city so little given 

 to private horsemanship, and a French experiment did 

 not produce much effect in England. 



In fact, the English list, which started so bravely 

 under distinguished patronage, after touching some 

 250 names, languished, and in spite of testimonials from 

 great names, only reached 320, when Mr. Rarey, at the 

 pressing recommendation of his English friends, re- 

 turned from Paris, and fixed the day for commencing 

 his lessons in the private riding-school of the Duke of 

 Wellington, the use of which had been in the kindest 

 manner offered by his Grace as a testimony of his high 

 opinion of the value of the new system. 



The course was commenced on the 20th March, by 

 inviting to a private lesson a select party of noblemen 

 and gentlemen, twenty-one in all, including, amongst 

 other accomplished horsemen and horse-breeders. Lord 

 Palmerston, the two ex-masters of the Royal Buck- 

 hounds, Earls Granville and Bessborough, the Marquis 

 of Stafford, Vice-President of the Four-Horse Driving 

 Club, and the Honourable Admiral Rous, the leading 



with a mare, althougli lie had never had his head through a collar 

 before ; and he went as quietly as the best-broken carriage -horse in 

 Paris. IVIi-. Rarey concluded by firing a six-chambered revolver from 

 his back." — Faris Illustrated Journal. 



