136 FORM AND ACTION. 



action his walk or trot should consist of, I shall deem here it 

 sufficient for all practical purposes that he is safe upon his feet in 

 his paces, and manifests sufficient speed in them to escape the 

 denunciation of being " slow." A horse may lift up and set down 

 his feet with mathematical precision and admirable beauty, as, in 

 some persons' estimation, most of the foreign horses do, and yet 

 prove insecure upon his legs, or he may go close enough almost 

 to kick up seven-shilling pieces, and yet prove a safe hackney, of 

 which T very well remember an instance in a mare, a cover hack, 

 belonging to Capt. P., who, notwithstanding she appeared to raise 

 her feet hardly oyster-shell height from the surface, dashed along 

 at a good ten-mile-an-hour trot, without — as the Captain has often 

 assured me — ever making a mistake. I do not make mention 

 of these acknowledged exceptions to general laws that have been 

 laid down by writers on action, with a view of casting any dispa- 

 ragement on them, but to shew that horses will go well and 

 safely in many ways different from those prescribed for them, 

 and in so many different modes, that, to set about to frame rules 

 for action, to say a walk should be performed in this manner, and 

 a trot in that manner, is more, I think, than any man who had 

 in his time ridden many horses would pretend to do. Even Sol- 

 leysell, who may be regarded as the original framer of these rules, 

 after telling us how a horse should raise his foot, " so as not to 

 cross one leg over the other," and how he should sustain his limb, 

 so as properly to poise his body, and how he should put it flat 

 down, " the whole foot equally at one and the same instant of 

 time," admits, still, that " there are some horses which, although 

 they have the raising, keeping up, and tread of the foot very good, 

 yet have they a bad walk." 



