256 The D)0k of the Horse. 



a riding-school ; and written rules, illustrated with engravings, can teach any one willing to learn 

 at least how to avoid many bad habits and awkward tricks. 



Riding on horseback is an art which those who have natural aptitude of form and nerve 

 may teach themselves by practice and imitating the best models ; but it is also an art that, 

 by judicious instruction, especially if the pupil is taught young, may be acquired by those 

 whose shape and temperament would never permit them to shine as jockeys or horsebreakers. 

 Any one with the courage of a bull-dog and the indifference to bruises of a lizard may 

 ride badly and boldly ; but very often the courage of ignorance disappears with the first 

 serious accident. 



To give a youth or girl the best chance, not to say of excellence, but of avoiding awkward 

 habits hard to cure, the early lessons of horse-life should be given with good models for imitation. 



There arc certainly more accomplished horsemen and horsewomen at the present time 

 than at any o'her period of the history of England ; and there are also more bad ones, especially 

 in Rotten Rov\', because it is the fashion for those who aspire to fashionable society to exhibit 

 themselves in that delightful lane of gossip and display, " with or without twelve lessons " 

 from a corporal of dragoons, or after learning everything that ought to be avoided from some 

 most respectable family coachman. 



It should clearly be understood that there is very fine horsemanship (that is, military 

 horsemanship), which is totally unlike our style, out of England— horsemanship suited to the 

 country and the habits of the horsemen, those, for instance, of India, who sit cross-legged and 

 not on chairs. In their way, the corps of irregular cavalry of India — native gentlemen riding 

 their own horses, in their own Oriental style, commanded by British officers— are second to 

 none ; not the least famous of these was commanded by Colonel (now General) Sir Dighton 

 Probyn, K.C.S.I., Equerry to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. When General Sir 

 Arthur Conynghame, K.C.B., who has seen service in all the wars of this generation, visited 

 the Caucasus, the feats of the Lesghians astonished him, familiar as he was with all that our 

 Indian horsemen can do with sword, lance, and firelock. Now these horsemen ride buried in 

 a stuffed leathern pillow, with long stirrups, a straight knee, and a snaffle bridle. 



Dr. Johnson, one of the honestest of men, once said to a young friend, "Above all, clear 

 your mind of cant." So it may be said to the pupil in horsemanship, " Clear your mind of 

 conceit ;" dismiss the idea that you or your countrymen excel every one. Practice on sound 

 principles makes perfect, but practice on false principles only confirms mischievous habits. 



HORSEMANSHIP FOR ADULTS. 

 "Horse exercise" 'is a common prescription of a fashionable physician addressed to a 

 patient whose general derangement of stomach, liver, and skin, not to mention brain, has been 

 brought about either by indolence and excesses of the table, or by sedentary and mental e.K- 

 hauslive pursuits — intellectual or financial* Perhaps the patient has never been on a horse in 

 his life, in which case it sounds something like advising a man who cannot swim to plunge 

 into deep water ; or perhaps he has ridden in the days of his youth, distant a quarter of a 

 century, when he also climbed trees, and danced reels or even hornpipes. At any rate, to 

 follow the prescription seems at first sight almost as difficult as for a banker's clerk, married, 

 with a family, and a nervous disorder, " to live well, and drink good sound claret.'' 



* Jolin Locke, Ihe great jihilosopher, wrote — "The proiierest recreation of studious seJentaiy persons, whose labour is thoimlit, 

 is bodily exercise," an.t he practised what he preached, for he kept two riding-horses. 



