INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 5 



Continentals, and even to some amateur dealers, who 

 made bad speculations in consequence. By-and-by it 

 was discovered that a great majority of these splendid 

 animals were either more or less restive, or at least 

 " difficult," as the phrase goes. Being frequently 

 purchased by military officers of superior rank, they 

 were naturally put into the riding-schools, where they 

 gave so much trouble that many professionals were led to 

 believe that English horses were incapable of any high 

 degree of school-training. Others who were more judi- 

 cious found it impossible to reconcile the well-known 

 docility of the English breed with the fractiousness 

 and intractability of these exported specimens, and 

 came to the very sound conclusion that the fault lay, 

 not in the breed, but in the previous injudicious hand- 

 ling of these individuals. Baucher, the French riding- 

 master, founded his great reputation which, by the 

 way, has been much exaggerated on his successful 

 conversion of the celebrated Partisan an English horse 

 that was sold for a song, because nobody could manage 

 Mm into a first-rate and most docile school-horse. 

 Some of the Germans, however, decided the question 

 in a still more positive manner, by buying young high- 

 bred horses in England that had never been backed ; 

 and Seeger, Yon Oeynhausen, and other first-rate 

 authorities, now all state that English horses are just 

 as capable of high training as all others, and more so 

 than the Arabians, who have a very peculiar trot. 



It is incontestable that the English, as a nation, 

 possess in a high degree the physical and moral qualifi- 

 cations that go to make good riders. Where, then, can 

 the fault lie ? Evidently in something connected with 

 the mechanism employed in enabling the horse to carry 



