66 NEW METHOD OP HORSEMANSHIP. 



wards in this way, whenever we crowd too much his 

 forces and weight upon his hind-parts ; by so doing we 

 destroy his equilibrium, and render grace, measure and 

 correctness impossible. Lightness, always lightness ! 

 this is the basis, the touchstone of all beautiful execu- 

 tion. With this, all is easy, as much for the horse as the 

 rider. That being the case, it is understood that the 

 difficulty of horsemanship does not consist in the direc- 

 tion to give the horse, but in the position to make him 

 assume — a position which alone can smooth all obstacles. 

 Indeed, if the horse executes, it is the rider who makes 

 him do so; upon him then rests the responsibility of 

 every false movement. 



It will suffice to exercise the horse for eight days (for five 

 minutes each lesson), in backing, to make him execute it 

 with facility. The rider will content himself the first few 

 times with one or two steps to the rear, followed by the 

 combined effect of the legs and hand, increasing in pro- 

 portion to the progress he makes, until he finds no more 

 difficulty in a backward than in a forward movement. 



What an immense step we will then have made in the 

 education of our pupil! At the start, the defective 

 formation of the animal, his natural contractions, the 

 resistances we encountered everywhere, seemed as if they 

 might defy our efforts forever. Without doubt they 

 would have been vain, had we made use of a bad course 

 of proceeding, but the wise system of progression that 

 we have introduced into our work, the destruction of the 

 instinctive forces of the horse, the suppling, the sepa- 

 rate subjection of all the rebellious parts, have soon 

 placed in our power the whole of the mechanism to 

 Buch a degree as to enable us to govern it completely, 

 and to restore that pliability, ease, and harmony of the 

 parts, which their bad arrangement appeared as if it 



