150 FORM AND ACTION. 



and a half seconds ; taking but half a second more to achieve the 

 same on the following month. And over the same (the Beacon) 

 Course, in May 1842, RlPTON, a brown gelding, trotted in harness 

 two miles in the astonishing small space of time of five minutes 

 and seven seconds ! — the greatest feat of the kind, probably, on 

 record. 



THE GALLOP. 



A horse by nature walks, trots, and gallops ; and with these 

 three paces his speed may be said to receive augmentations from 

 the comparative slowness of the first until it arrives at the pro- 

 verbial fleetness of the last : hence the word gallop, in a variety 

 of figurative senses, is used to imply fast motion or great haste. 

 Its literal meaning, as regards quadrupeds, is given in our diction- 

 aries to be moving forward by leaps ; and the animal in the act 

 of galloping creates that motion in his body which certainly strikes 

 the casual observer with the notion that he is making at the time 

 a succession of jumps or leaps. Indeed, some equestrian writers 

 have gone so far as to define the gallop of speed or racing gallop 

 to be nothing more than a repetition of leaps. Mr. Blaine ob- 

 serves, that " as the two fore feet at once beat the ground together, 

 and then the two hinder, so it is evident that the gallop of speed 

 is nothing more than a repetition of leaps." Lecoq likewise de- 

 scribes the galop de course as consisting in une succession de sauts. 

 In the face, however, of these worthy authorities, I must say that, 

 to me, the gallop and the leap appear acts of a different nature, 

 and consequently that we are in error when we say that the one is 

 no more than a compound or repetition of the other. In galloping 

 a horse — in hunting for example — the rider needs no person to 

 tell him of the moment his horse is taking a leap, however 

 trifling it may be : his own sensations inform him of every grip or 

 furrow his horse leaps in his course, and should he have occasion 

 to make a succession of such jumps, the rider's sensations in his 

 saddle are of a very different — very uneasy — kind, compared to 

 such as he experiences during the act of galloping. This arises 

 from two causes : — from the spring or movement of the body neces- 

 sary to produce the leap being more forcible and sudden than that 

 required for the gallop, and from the latter being created and con- 



