HORSE FOR GRASS COUNTRIES 243 



It is in fact advisable to discard all prejudices and as 

 a rule to turn a deaf ear to advice when buying a horse 

 for Leicestershire. If a horse has a character, and 

 you can ride him, he is worth a trial. Every one who 

 buys horses must sometimes make mistakes. If, how- 

 ever, a horse is otherwise a good one, though he does 

 not cross the country quite to your satisfaction, it is 

 well to take into consideration the horsemanship of 

 his previous owner, for there are very few horses that 

 can pretend to gallop or jump over Leicestershire that 

 cannot be improved in the hands of a straight and 

 bold rider. This, of course, would be a truism if I 

 were referring to fine horsemanship, but I am now 

 writing only of the will and the power to send a horse 

 along. If my reader can do this, he may be sure that 

 horses, otherwise fair, will improve in his possession. 



A man never knows what a horse can do until he 

 really tests him. There is an excellent illustration of 

 this in the story of the way the famous Dicky Bayzand 

 made a hunter of Nimrod's red-legged mare in an hour. 

 (She was a beautiful grey on a black skin, with one 

 bright chestnut hinder leg and thigh, quite up to the 

 stifle.) " With a skinful of wine we turned out about 

 six o'clock in the evening of one of the last days in 

 April to wind our way homewards not by the road, 

 but as the crow flies, over that stiff vale between 

 Tenbury and Ludlow, and there and then the educa- 

 tion of the red-legged was completed. So straight- 

 forward and so fearlessly did Dicky Bayzand put her 

 along — no finer horseman than he was, but shy of 

 unmade ones when sober — that she never offered to 

 refuse another fence, and I afterwards called her a 

 hunter." * 



It will be seen, then, that beauty by no means has 



* sporting Review, 1 840. 



