326 THE HOKSE. 



race-horce, and still be utterly unbroken and subject to every one 

 of the defects I have named above — because a match trotter, or a 

 race-horse, is only required to be able to accomplish one thing ; 

 that is to go the greatest pace and win, without any regard to the 

 style, appearance, manner or form of doing it ; and, in fact, to put 

 him into trained paces might probably detract from his speed, in- 

 stead of increasing it — but what is the consequence — that, because 

 match-trotters and race-horses are allowed to batter away, in any 

 awkward, ungainly, pulley-hauley, nose-out, head-down, boring 

 way of going, they may naturally adopt, they are, ninety-nine 

 times out of a hundred, the most disagreeable, bone-setting, 

 shoulder-dislocating, indocile, unmanageable brutes to ride, that 

 can be imagined. Where one is not so — as was the case with the 

 race-mare Fashion, and as is always the case with a few thorough- 

 breds, and still fewer trotters — it is because the animal is naturally 

 perfectly well made, w^ell balanced and harmonious in all its parts ; 

 and necessarily, as a consequence of tliat physical perfection of 

 form, perfect, also, in all its motions. When to this, a perfect 

 temper is added, you have — if it fall into the right hands, of a 

 person who will not by his own ignorance^ inflexibility of hand, 

 or unsteadiness of seat, teach it bad habits — one of tliose phe- 

 nomena, a perfect, natural horse, which requires no breaking. 



Just in the same way, a man may be an admirable jockey, 

 and perfection as a match-trotter, and yet may be, especially 

 in the case of the latter, no horseman in the large sense of the 

 word — for, though each can ride one sort of horse to perfection, 

 on an}'^ other kind of horse he will be nowhere ; and, in the case 

 of the match-trotter, the very qualities which give him success, 

 to wit, his method of keeping a dead pull through the rings of 

 a martingale, in one steady direction and at nearly one force, 

 upon a mouth which has been instructed to require such an un- 

 relaxed pull, to pull against it, and to lean upon it, and liis ne- 

 cessarily acquired habit of steadying his seat, thrown far back in 

 his saddle, by the arm's-length pull at the mouth, and by the 

 firm, bearing pressure on his stirrups, will unfit him for any 

 other seat, or any other mode of riding. 



Put the best jockey rider, used to make the best of hard-pull- 

 ing, boring race-horses, leaning on the hand and tearing away at 

 the top of their speed, on the back of a perfectly-made hunter. 



