14 UNASKED ADVICE. 



lead tlie first flight. Exceptions here^ as always, prove 

 tlie rule, wliicli is tliat (luckily for our peace of mind) 

 few if any ladies go on " bruising ^' across country for 

 any very extended time, though they may ride well, 

 gracefully, and I may say reaso7iaUy, to hounds for a 

 lifetime. But here I have decidedly run off the line, and 

 forgotten the horse in attention to his rider — a thing 

 which I have the consolation of knowing has been done 

 before, literally as well as figuratively. 



We must '^ hark back,^^ as the old phrase goes, to the 

 point at which it was determined that the hunter must be 

 preternaturally clever, and a stone over his mistress's 

 weight. To get him handy he may be ridden in the 

 manege, like the hack, with this difference, that he ought 

 to be cantered to hoth hands, as a hunter must be equal 

 to any emergency, and ready to change his le^ or lead 

 with eitl^er as circumstances of the most impromptu nature 

 may dictate. The saddlery in which he is to perform 

 differs only in one or two very small details from the 

 Rotten-row kit. In both cases simjplex munditiis is the 

 preferable form. A hacking bridle may be allowed a 

 standing martingale ; not to keep the head down — he is 

 no lady's horse who puts it up — but as a check, in case a 

 fly, or such like cause, should cause him to toss it about 

 at all. A hacking bridle, too, may have a little more 

 ornament about it, a branch bit not being wholly inad- 

 missible ; but the hunting bridle should be a refined like- 

 ness of the plain tackle with which the sterner sex control, 

 or attempt to control, their fliers — rather thinner reins and 

 a general increase of elegance being the only difference. As 

 to the bit employed, that depends altogether on the horse's 

 mouth and disposition. An extremely light-mouthed 

 horse is a bore — that is to say, a horse of whom one is 



