HOW TO HAKE MONET BY HORSES. 89 



likely he has no natural spring in him — a defect 

 no art can remedy ; so, in fact, the animal's instinct 

 teaches him to adopt and continue the only mode of 

 leaping that he can practise with safety to himself, 

 and consequently to his rider. Yet such a horse, 

 though quite useless with fox-hounds, would, no 

 doubt, be highly valued with a pack of slow beagles. 

 There are many horses that will go with racing 

 stride, and at racing speed, across a level country, 

 but cannot go up hill, and are unpleasant, and in- 

 deed unsafe, to ride down them : such horses would 

 make no figure in Surrey and other counties that do 

 not require, in a general way, horses of high pre- 

 tensions to be considered very superior hunters. 

 "Who would volunteer to ride such a horse as Bay 

 Middleton or Birmingham in the neighbourhood of 

 Brighton? their extraordinary stride would send 

 them headlong down those Sussex hills, while the 

 same stride would distress in going up them. Yet 

 I should by no means have objected to trying my 

 hand at converting Birmingham into a hunter for a 

 grass country ; the same power, elasticity, and 



