HORSEMEN NOT WANTED AT THE BAR. 183 



height than mine has taken ; but if he has, I will 

 answer for it he has sometimes jumped it, sometimes 

 tumbled over it, and very often refused it. He has 

 only learned, that by making a kind of effort of some 

 sort, he can sometimes get over his leap, and some- 

 times tumble over it : mine has got his lesson per- 

 fectly; knows how to set about the thing scienti- 

 fically ; feels and knows, by very moderate exertion, 

 he can do the thing to a certainty; is not afraid of 

 it; so never refuses it, either from want of confidence 

 in his own powers, or from having been disgusted 

 with leaping from its having been made a punish- 

 ment to him. People generally make a horse jump 

 too often over the same thing : this further disgusts 

 him: when he has acquitted himself well, leave off; 

 otherwise you tire and put him out of humour. 



I have heard people give as a reason for having 

 leaping-bars made to go down, that they do it for the 

 safety of the " man." This would be all very well 

 if bars were intended for men to ride over ; but they 

 are not: they are only intended to teach young 

 horses the rudiments of leaping in hand. If you 

 wish to show how a horse will carry over a fence, 

 take him to a proper place, and there ride at hedges, 

 ditches, hurdles, or gates, as you please, and leave the 

 bar in the school-room. A young horse left to the 

 tuition of a groom seldom makes a neat and perfect 

 fencer : they drive horses over their fences ; this causes 

 them to rush headlong at them ; by doing which they 

 either blunder into them, or do, what is almost as 

 bad, take twice as much out of themselves as they 

 have any occasion to do. This soon beats them, and 

 then they cannot, if they would, jump high or wide 

 enough. A horse, in taking his spring, should be 



N 4 



