A Tour on Horseback. 229 



do their day's work. Changed indeed are habits and tastes since the time when a good 

 roadster hackney was worth as much as, and was more carefully chosen than, the modern 

 brougham horse. 



Before railroads had ceased to be considered an unclean thing by the landed gentry, and 

 when only a few main trunk lines had intersected the country, the tour on horseback was 

 still to be enjoyed in perfection by a young horseman whose years, health, and spirits, could 

 defy the damp days, muddy roads, dark nights, and uncertain inns, for the sake of independence, 

 adventure, and the abstract pleasure there is in riding a good horse. 



"The sage opinion passed on Colonel Mannering, 'that a gentleman may be known by 

 liis horse,' was shared by many of the ostlers who received him into their patronising hands. 

 Well mounted, the young adventurer was not tied by a mile or two or an hour or two, and 

 was not afraid of getting a little wrong in trying a short cut, or investigating a promising, 

 scene, a green range of liills, or ancient manor buried in a park of ancestral oaks. Country 

 folk were wonderfully kind and cheery to such a traveller ; stout farmers returning from 

 market were hospitably pressing (in the northern counties) ; and squires, once assured the 

 stranger was only travelling for pleasure, wonderfully kind on face of introduction of a well- 

 bred nag and an inquiring face innocent of beard. Not unfrequently the adventure of Squire 

 Western on his road to London was repeated — a chance run with hounds, and a dinner with 

 a stranger to follow. All through the counties where, at war prices, moor land had been 

 enclosed, there were long slips of greensward on either side of the highway, inviting a canter 

 in the morning, and affording pleasant walking ground for the last tired mile or two. Then 

 there were many delightful short cuts through bridle-roads, across fords too deep for wheels, 

 and — by sufferance of lodge-keepers open to the blandishments of a smile, a pleasant word 

 and a shilling — through parks rich in turf, water, woodland, game and deer. Oh, those were 

 delightful days, when, young and full of life, and hope, and romance, with a good horse, a 

 sufficiently well-filled purse, and more than one friend on the road, the youth who thought 

 himself a man set out, not afraid of rheumatism, to travel some two or three hundred miles 

 with a definite point to reach, but no particular day, or hour, or route ! " 



The rider of a really good hack can leave him to himself on the very worst roads 

 with perfect confidence that he will pick his way and put every foot down on the best place 

 The fore-feet of a good hack, be the pace fast or slow, are always well forward, and fall flat 

 on the ground ; the action in the trot such that the fore-legs work from the shoulders, and 

 are bent so that the rider, sitting upright, can just see the knees as they rise, but not by 

 any means " up to the curb-chain." Machine-like regularity and ease characterise all the good 

 hack's paces — that is, the paces of a really good one — but it is astonishing how many queer 

 animals fumble at a great rate along a good road without getting a fall. "A useful riding- 

 horse may not have perfect shoulders," says a cavalry officer, who was a great authority in 

 Rotten Row forty years ago; "but they must be strong, and the fore-feet not so far back 

 as to make a horse stand over like a cart-horse, or many a useful brougham-hc>rse." No horse 

 can carry a heavy weight with too long a back, or without muscular loins and wide hips. 



Above all things, for country use and long rides, the so-called cobs, that owe their apparent 

 strength to a close connection with cart-horse blood, are to be avoided. Almost as a matter 

 of course, they have straight shoulders, and their fore-feet are too far under them. For want 

 of blood they soon tire ; after a couple of miles trotting "they begin to step short, then trip, 

 and unless soon pulled up fall like logs, without an effort to save themselves. 



Good shoulders do not mean, at any rate in a young horse, their being thin (" knif\' ") 



