ANCIENT LAWS AND MODERN LAWS. 181 



fatal in its consequences than at any other fence ; 

 and, secondly, it is a description of one that requires 

 on the part of a horse exertions the least natural to 

 him. Brooks or dry ravines are things he would 

 meet with in a state of nature. If galloping in a 

 AYild state he came to one of these, and was excited, 

 he would as naturally extend his stride or bound to 

 twenty feet as he had taken twelve in his gallop ; but 

 timber is quite a different affair. Dame Nature, 

 capital workwoman as she is in making an oak tree 

 or an heir to an estate, never made a five-barred gate 

 in her existence ; consequently she never gave a horse 

 an idea of jumping one. 



In practising horses at a leaping-bar, I have often 

 been astonished at the absurdities and wanton severity 

 I have seen used. It is very common to see a naked 

 bar so adjusted as to fall in case a horse should hit it. 

 Now this is the very time when it should be immove- 

 able : the allowing a bar to give way will spoil all 

 the horses in the world : if he is a young or unprac- 

 tised one, we are positively teaching him to knock 

 down or attempt to knock down timber whenever he 

 sees it, instead of clearing it. How is a horse to 

 know we want him to jump over what he finds it 

 easier to knock down ? And then, if he does knock it 

 down, he is often severely flogged for what he does 

 not know is wrong. A bar should be well clothed 

 with furze : this teaches a horse it is not to be 

 touched with impunity : it should then be confined so 

 as in one respect to be like the law of the Medes and 

 Persians, not to be moved ; while in another it should, 

 like some laws near home, be left so as to be rolled 

 backwards or forwards, just as may suit the will of 

 the higher powers. But though it may do this, let a 



N 3 



