34 Modern Riding and Horse Education 



of riding was unsuitable for jumping; and New- 

 castle remarks : *' Nothing disorders a Horse's 

 Mouth more than Leaps." 



Until fox-hunting became general, towards the 

 close of the eighteenth century,^ it was not con- 

 sidered correct to ride with a bent knee. Writing 

 in 1805, Adams says that '' although gentlemen may 

 give their horses a breathing in this style of riding 

 in the park, or occasionally over a piece of common 

 by the roadside, yet it is not becoming or genteel 

 to practise it much on the road." 



Baucher {circa 1850), and every other past mas- 

 ter of Haute Ecole — excepting Fillis, if we are to 

 judge by his illustrations — rode with a compara- 

 tively speaking straight leg, and claimed that this 

 seat alone gave that nice equilibrium, light hand, and 

 power of leg so indispensable in working the horse 

 in advanced manege riding. 



Although Haute Ecole training never seems lo 

 have been generally popular after hunting com- 

 menced over enclosed countries, and is practically 



1 In •' Sports and Pursuits of the English," we read that hounds 

 were never entered solely to fox till 1750 ; but in his " Encyclopaedia 

 of Rural Sports," Blaine says that the first real steady pack of fox- 

 hounds was established in the Western part of England about 1730. 



