THE RIDER. 189 



jcct as horsemanship,' it behoves every writer to be careful. To 

 tell a man what he ought to do, is one thing ; to teach him how 

 he ought to do it, is another, and a very different thing. ' Every 

 man,' says the same master of the game, ' who wears spurs 

 believes himself more or less an adept in the art of riding.' 

 For adepts it would obviously be as presumptuous as useless to 

 write. But to briefly and gently indicate to those who are not 

 yet adepts the chief points to be avoided, may possibly best 

 serve to put them in the best road to become such. 



There are, of course, various degrees of badness. A rider 

 is not necessarily a had man because he is not always in the first 

 flight, nor need he even merit the epithet if he be never found 

 there. On the other hand, a ' thrusting scoundrel ' is by no 

 manner of means to be accepted unreservedly as a good man. 

 When the ' Spectator ' paid his famous visit to Sir Roger de 

 Coverley he was so enchanted with a day's hare hunting his 

 host showed him (our humanitarians will be delighted to hear 

 that the good knight's ' stop hounds ' were not permitted to kill 

 their game) that, regardless of Pascal's contempt for men who 

 could ' throw away so much time and pains on a silly animal 

 which they might buy cheaper in the market,' he registered the 

 following resolve : ' For my own part I intend to hunt twice a 

 week during my stay with Sir Roger ; and shall prescribe the 

 moderate use of this exercise to all my country friends, as the 

 best kind of physic for mending a bad constitution and preserv- 

 ing a good one.' Now the ' Spectator ' by his own confession 

 was anything but a hard rider. ' My aversion,' he says, ' to leap- 

 ing hedges made me withdraw to a rising ground, from whence 

 I could have the pleasure of the whole chase without the fatigue 

 of keeping in with the hounds.' He made no jDretence of riding ; 

 he went out for his health's sake, and for the novelty of the 

 diversion, leaving the ' honours ' of the chase to more daring 

 spirits. No true sportsman would despise such a man, any more 

 than he would find in his heart much praise for him who gauged 

 his day's sport by the size of the fences he had jumped and the 

 number of his friends he had cut down. Hunting is the 



