168 ON HUNTING. 



mouth, you can tell nothing about him. You hold him, 

 he can make a second effort ; if you drop him, he 

 won't." 



Now, Dick does not mean by this that you are to go 

 slowly at every kind of fence. He tells you that he 

 " sent him with some powder at a bullfinch ; " but what- 

 ever the pace, you so hold your horse in the last fifty 

 yards up to the taking-off point, that instead of spread- 

 ing himself out all abroad at every stroke, he feels the 

 bit and gets his hind-legs well under him. If you 

 stand to see Jim Mason or Tom Oliver in the hunting- 

 field going at water, even at what they call " forty miles 

 an hour," you will find the stride of their horses a mea- 

 sured beat, and while tliey spur and m^ge them they col- 

 lect them. This is the art no book can teach ; hut it can 

 teach that it ought to he learned. Thousands of falls have 

 been caused by a common and most absurd phrase, 

 which is constantly repeated in every description of the 

 leaps of a great race or run. " He look his horse hy the 

 head and lifted him,'' &c. 



No man in the world ever lifted a horse over anything 

 ■ — it is a mechanical impossibility — but a horseman of 

 the first order can at a critical moment so rouse a horse, 

 and so accurately place his head and hind-legs in the 

 right position, that he can make an extraordinaiy effort 

 and achieve a miraculous leap. This in metaphorical 

 language is called lifting a horse, because, to a bye- 

 stander, it looks like it. But when a novice, or even an 

 average horseman, attempts this sort of tour deforce, he 

 only worries his horse, and, ten to one, throws him into 

 the fence. Those who are wise will content themselves 

 with keeping a horse well in hand until he is about to 

 rise for his effort, and to collecting him the moment he 

 lands. The right hold brings his hind legs under him ; 



