48 THE SEAT AND BALANCE. 



teach her to accompany, with precision and ease, the 

 various movements of the horse. 



Nothing can be more detrimental to the grace of a 

 lady's appearance on horseback, than a bad position : 

 a recent author says, it is a sight that would spoil the 

 finest landscape in the world. What can be much 

 more ridiculous, than the appearance of a female, 

 whose whole frame, through mal-position, seems to be 

 the sport of every movement of the horse ? If the 

 lady be not mistress of her seat, and be unable to 

 maintain a proper position of her limbs and body, so 

 soon as her horse starts into a trot, she runs the risk 

 of being tossed about on the saddle, like the Halcyon 

 of the poets in her frail nest, — 



" Floating upon the boisterous rude sea." 



If the animal should canter, his fair riders head will 

 be jerked to and fro as " a vexed weathercock;" her 

 drapeiy will be blown about, instead of falling grace- 

 fully around her ; and her elbows rise and fall, or, as 

 it were, flap up and down like the pinions of an 

 awkward nesthng endeavouring to fly. To avoid such 

 disagreeable similes being applied to her, the young 

 lady, who aspires to be a good rider, shovdd, even 

 from her first lesson in the art, strive to obtain a 

 proper deportment on the saddle. She ought to be 

 correct, without seeming stiff or fonnal : and easy, 

 without appearing slovenly. The position we have 



