THE RIDER. 201 



really secure the one without the other, as any man may prove 

 foi himself : the proper balance of the upper limbs can only be 

 preserved by the firmness of the lower. One often hears of a 

 resolute rider holding a shifty horse in such a grasp that, with 

 the worst intentions in the world, refusal is quite out of the 

 question. Now, this grasp is quite as much a matter of the 

 legs as the hands, and a horse is quite as quick to understand 

 and appreciate the meaning of the former as of the latter. 

 The good Mr. Greene, whose hand and seat were so light as to 

 have won him the nickname of ' the Fly,' always struck people 

 as intimating his will to his horse more by knee-pressure than 

 anything else. Most horses, it should be remembered, will gauge 

 the quality of their riders in a much shorter time than the gene- 

 rality of riders will gauge the quality of animals beneath them. 

 A story is told of the wonderful sympathy Assheton Smith always 

 contrived to establish between his horse and himself, which shows 

 by what slight means this mutual understanding, when once 

 established, can be maintained. He had mounted a friend 

 upon one of the best horses then in his stable, Cicero by name. 

 Hounds were running fast over the grass, and, as usual, Smith 

 was at their stern, with his friend at his side. Before them 

 stretched a most uncompromising flight of rails, which Smith 

 saw was not much to the taste of his friend, and was likely, 

 therefore, to prove equally distasteful to Cicero. As they 

 neared the obstacle Smith removed the irresolution at any rate 

 of the horse by the exclamation, ' Come up, Cicero,' and the 

 moment that well-known voice was heard, all thought of refusal 

 passed out of Cicero's head. The rails were cleared ; but, as 

 Cicero's rider was not quite so susceptible of sympathy, they 

 were cleared, as one may say, in detachments, though luckily 

 with no worse effect to the biped than a roll on the grass. A 

 horse who has had any experience of humanity, as soon as his 

 rider has settled himself on the saddle, will generally form a 

 pretty shrewd opinion of that rider's intentions ; and the way 

 the human legs are placed against his flanks will help him to 

 that opinion as much as anything else. 



