380 THE HORSE. 



position which alone can smooth all obstacles. Indeed, if the 

 horse execute, it is the rider who impels him to do so ; upon 

 him, tlien, rests the responsibility of every false movement. 



It will suffice to exercise the horse for eight days, for five 

 minutes each lesson, in backing, to make him execute it with 

 facility. The rider will content himself the first few times with 

 one or two steps to the rear, followed by the combined efi'ect of 

 the legs and hand, increasing in proportion to the progress he 

 makes, until he finds no more difficulty in a backward than in a 

 forward movement. 



What an immense step we shall then have gained in the 

 education of our pupil ! At the start, the defective formation of 

 the animal, his natural contractions, the resistances which we 

 encountered every where, seemed as if they would defy our 

 effcu-ts, for ever. Without doubt those efiforts would have been 

 vain, had we made use of a bad course of proceeding ; but the 

 wise system of progression which we have introduced into our 

 work, the destruction of the instinctive forces of the horse, the 

 suppling of tlie parts, the separate subjection of all the rebel- 

 lious influences, have soon placed in our power the whole of his 

 mechanism to a degree which enables us to govern it com- 

 pletely, and to restore that pliability, ease, and harmony of the 

 parts, which their bad arrangement threatened always to pre- 

 vent. 



Was I not right then, in saying, that if it be not in my 

 power to change the defective formation of a horse, I can yet 

 prevent the consequences of his physical defects, so as to render 

 him as fit to do every thing with grace and natural ease, as the 

 better-formed horse? In suppling the parts of the animal upon 

 which the rider acts directly, in order to govern and guide him, 

 in accustoming them to yield without difficulty or hesitation to 

 the different impressions which are communicated to them, I 

 have destroyed their stiffness, and restored the centre of gravity 

 to its true j^lace, namely, to the middle of the body. I have, 

 besides, settled the greatest difficulty of horsemanship ; that of 

 subjecting to my will, which is more necessary than aught else, 

 the parts upon which the rider acts directly, in order to pre- 

 pare for him infallible means of impressing his will upon the 

 horse. 



