CHAPTEE III. 



SEATS. 



WHEN one observes the great variety of seats on horse- 

 back that present themselves to our notice every day, 

 and their totally contradictory character in the most 

 important respects, a certain amount of bewilderment 

 necessarily ensues, which resolves itself into a curious 

 dilemma. We can scarcely admit that they are all 

 wrong, and it seems equally impossible to assert that 

 they are all right ; which, then, is the right, and which 

 the wrong? or is a seat on horseback something out- 

 side of the laws that govern the rest of animate and 

 inanimate nature, subject to no rule, defiant of all 

 generalisation, and, in fact, a thing per se a sort of 

 mysterious existence beyond our ken ? What, for 

 instance, can be more contradictory than to see one 

 man sitting at one end of the saddle, as in an easy- 

 chair, with his legs tucked up at the other, till his 

 knees are nearly on a level with the pommel ; whilst 

 a second, sitting in his fork, sticks out his legs as stiff 

 and as far away from the horse as he can, taking for 

 his model what is very aptly named in ' Harry Lorre- 

 quer' "the pair-of-tongs-across-a-stone-wall seat," for 

 an illustration of which see Plate V. ? And there are 

 no end of intermediate seats between these two, with 

 the most wonderful curvatures of the rider's back, 



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