18 THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 



three or four violent struggles to rise, he becomes all of a 

 sudden so completely cowed, that not only without any 

 resistance does he allow his harness piecemeal to be 

 unbuckled, the carriage detached, and pushed away far 

 behind him, but, when lying thus perfectly unfettered, 

 it requires kicks, stripes, and a malediction or two, to 

 induce him to make the little effort necessary to rise from 

 his prostrate state. 



Again, in the hunting-field, a noble, high-couraged 

 horse, a rusher at any description of fence, the very sight 

 of which seems to inflame his ardour, in most gallant 

 style charges a brook, which when he is in the air he 

 sees is too broad to be cleared. On his chest striking 

 against the bank, and while his rider, delighted at feeling 

 that he is not a bit hurt, is luxuriously rolling over and 

 over on the green grass like a rabbit that at full speed has 

 been shot dead, this gallant steed makes two, three, or 

 four desperate efforts to get to him; and yet, simply 

 because the mud at the bottom of the brook catches hold 

 of his hind feet, and the sticky perpendicular clay bank 

 grasps his fore ones, his courage suddenly fails him, and 

 as nothing will then induce him to make another effort, 

 it becomes necessary to send, often several miles, for 

 cart-horses to drag this high-bred animal out by his 

 neck. 



But although this strange mixture of courage and cow- 



