clients ; while in England and Wales the lawyer, the doctor, the brewer, the innkeeper, are 

 leading personages in rural hunts. 



The mistake the French Government have made in their arrangements for improving the 

 lighter breeds of horses has not been in principles but in details ; that is to say, in the choice 

 of foreign stallions. They have been too fond of purchasing celebrated race-horses of great 

 size, winners of great stakes, without regard to the uses for which they are required. In 

 Austria they understand this business better. Moderate-sized thoroughbred horses, with 

 plenty of bone and good action, that have never raced and never could race with success, 

 would do more for the cobs of Brittany, the ponies of the Ardennes, the Barbs of Tarbes, 

 and the wild horses of the Camargue, than the uncertain Anglo-Normans, the narrow, cat- 

 hammed Arabs, or the West Australians and Flying Dutchmen, on which so much money 

 has been wasted. 



Besides the difficulty in want of natural pastures, and customers out of Paris, the French 

 breeder and trainer of good horses labours under immense disadvantages from the want of 

 good grooms. Out of Normandy it is difficult to find a man with knowledge of and pride 

 in his horses. German grooms are often excellent. The Northern Italians are good ; but 

 a really competent French groom is a phoeni.x. So much is the want felt that not only were 

 the eco/es de dressage (schools for training grooms) established by the late Emperor well sup- 

 ported, but several private establishments were founded and assisted by a State subsidy. 

 The French grooms have not the prevalent vice of English and Irish grooms — drunkenness — but 

 they seldom take pains with or pride in their horses. 



A celebrated French equestrienne complained to the English proprietor of a circus that 

 her groom, a Lorrainer, was too ill to attend to her horses. " Been getting drunk, ma'm'selle, 

 I suppose — ha ! " " Oh dear no ; he has been stuffing himself to death with hot pastry ! " 

 Now this man really was a good stableman, although he clattered about in wooden shoes and 

 made himself sick with penny tarts. 



PRUSSIA. 



Prussia, as long as she has been a kingdom, has numbered amongst her German subjects 

 a race of gentlemen, true knights, enthusiastically fond of the horse ; and among her Polish 

 subjects a nation of born horsemen — horsemen not only from taste, but from make and shape ; 

 lean, sinewy fellows, with no inclination to grow into the terribly fat sergeant-majors of England 

 and France. 



Frederick the Great had the finest cavalry of his day, and won some of his greatest 

 victories with them — Kesseldorf, Rossbach, Zorndorf. He drew his light horses chiefly from 

 Poland, and his heavy cavalry from North Germany. His cavalry sat as he did himself, on 

 a natural seat, and rode well. It was not until the time of his ignoble successor, the accomplice 

 and victim of the conqueror at Jena, that the ridiculous "tongs on the wall" seat was 

 adopted; to be copied, after the Peace of 18 [5, by the royal commanding officers of 

 other countries, who ought to have known better, along with the absurdities of tight 

 uniforms. 



Prussia has, like France, depots for the purchase and training of cavalry horses ; si.K in 

 East Prussia, one in Brandenburgh, one in Posen, one in Hanover, one in the province of 

 Saxony, two in Pomerania, and one in Grand Ducal Hesse. Each depot consists of several 

 farms, on which the greatest part of the forage is grown ; and, what is very extraordinary in 

 a Government establishment, these farms actually realise a profit — actually cover a large 

 share of the yearly expense. The young horses, purchased at three years old, are stabled 



