Modern Horsemanship. 255 



Gervase Markham obscurely alludes, after giving a picture of " a perfect saddle," in which no 

 one could safely ride across an enclosed country. The traditions of the high school system 

 still flourish on the Continent ; and they have only recently, speaking historically, become 

 extinct in England, under the influence of the modern hunting-field and steeplechase course. 



Our soldiers since 1850 have been taught to ride in a manner which enables them "to 

 do anything and go anywhere" that a horseman should; but before the Crimean War there 

 were regiments in which extravagantly long stirrups and " tlie balance scat" zvithont dinging, 

 were the rule. To go still further back, soon after the Peace of 181 5 a Prussian riding-master 

 was employed, under the patronage of the Prince Regent, to drill our cavalry to ride with 

 nearly as straight a leg as the Duke of Newcastle in 165S, on their forks, instead of on their 

 seats. My informant, the late R. B. Davis, the animal painter, frequently witnessed this 

 barbarous performance in the fields where Belgrave Square now stands ; it was not discontinued 

 until a large per-centage of the troopers had been disabled by ruptures. 



Under Frederick the Great the Prussian cavalry, which gained his most important victories, 

 rode well on a natural seat, if an opinion may be formed from a curious equestrian portrait of 

 old Fritz himself, upon a black Holstein charger. 



As late as 1835 it was the fashion for the swells or dandies of the period — Count d'Orsay, 

 the Earl of Chesterfield, and their imitators — to tittup along the streets and in the Park with 

 their toes just touching the stirrups, which hung three inches lower than in the hunting-field. 

 But about the same time arose a school of professional steeplechase riders, founded on the 

 soundest principles of " the school, the field, and the turf," which had followers and pupils 

 amongst the highest aristocracy ; and this school eventually extinguished the affectations 

 of the fribble school and the pretensions of the high school, and established a style at once 

 practical, manly, and elegant, which has since been emulated by all the best horsemen on 

 the Continent.* 



At the beginning of this century, as may be seen from hunting pictures (in which the 

 admirable pencil drawings of Aiken are disfigured in coarse coloured lithographs), the style of 

 horsemanship was decidedly bad and vulgar — a sort of imitation of the jockeys of the turf, who 

 have a sound reason for bending forward over their horses' withers in a gallop of a few minutes. 

 Compare these prints of Aiken's or Sir John Dean Paul's with the pictures of the elder Herring 

 • — as for example, that of " Steeplechase Cracks," and take for an example of the proper 

 form of a born horseman the portrait of Jem Mason, on Lottery (whose only fault was to sit 

 too far back on the saddle), and the difference between the Georgian and the modern style 

 of horsemanship is seen at a glance more clearly than could be explained in a dozen pages. 

 This style, formed by the professional steeplechasers, and soon adopted in the fashionable 

 hunting shires, was in every respect the very reverse of the fribble style of the Park and of 

 the single-handed, snaffle-bridle, pig-tailed squires of the previous century, who hated every- 

 thing foreign, and with whom everything foreign was French; and this natural style in which 

 the maxim " ars celare ar/eni" so congenial to English tastes, was strictly followed, soon 

 made its way to the road and the Park from the steeplechase course and the hunting-field. 



The best instruction in equestrian arts is that obtained by word of mouth from a com- 

 petent instructor, with living examples to illustrate each precept ; but it is not in the power of 

 every one to obtain the services of a really competent riding-master, either on the road or in 



* Particularly by the subjects — Hungarian and German — of the Emperor of Austria, and by the steeplechase sportsmen 

 of the French school. 



