GENERAL ArrEAP.AXCE. 197 



or rejecting a horse from his general appearance, 

 which are these. 



Hide or use any breed or description of horse 

 that suits your fancy, or rather pursuits, but 

 select such as are of a good sort of their kind, 

 and reject such as are not. 



Ride or use such horses as are appropriate 

 to the purposes to which you put them, and do 

 not be persuaded to buy any other : when I say 

 appropriate, I mean as to qualifications, and still 

 better if in appearance also. 



By qualifications I mean chiefly appropriate 

 action ; for if a man, determined to have a fine 

 horse to ride from his villa to London, or in the 

 Park, had given two thousand for Harkaway, I 

 can tell him he would have been uncomfortably 

 carried ; if he rode a mere park horse, or a 

 pleasant safe cob, with the Atherstone in their 

 Leicestershire country, he would be equally un- 

 comfortably carried, and not carried far either. 

 These are, I grant, extreme cases ; but really 

 many persons do verge on them in their selection 

 of horses ; and so long as they do they may select 

 and reject, as often as they please : they never will 

 be pleasantly carried, or derive that credit for the 

 expense they go to that they anticipate. 



Although a knowledge of or judgment in 

 horses, or the want of either, has nothing at all 

 to do with a man's general sense or talent, the 



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