HORSE MANUFACTUEEES. 247 



mount ; mounts ; seats himself, prepares himself and 

 horse to move ; and when he does move, you can see 

 by his riding that it is an effort ; and it always strikes 

 me that a dragoon looks (though we know it is not 

 so) as if he was afraid of his horse : he looks artificial ; 

 while the other and his horse look as if, like the 

 Siamese twins, they had been born together. A man 

 with these advantages can do a great deal with horses : 

 he is not certainly a manufacturer of horses, but he 

 is in a great measure a manufacturer of hunters, 

 hacks, harness-horses, &c. He really buys the raw 

 material, and makes it into what other people pay a 

 high price for. He cannot perhaps afford to pay three 

 hundred for a horse fourteen or fifteen years old, be- 

 cause he is a perfect made hunter : he knows how to 

 make a hunter, then why should he pay for one ready 

 made ? To him the making a horse is as much an 

 amusement as making a picture or a garden is to an- 

 other: he really makes the horse valuable, and has 

 a right to that value when he sells him. His good 

 judgment makes him select a young horse that he 

 sees ought to be first-rate as a hunter : he takes care 

 to buy him at a price that will do no great harm sup- 

 posing he finds he does not answer his expectation as 

 a hunter : his size, figure, looks, and action, will pro- 

 bably at all events command what he gave for him — 

 say a hundred ; so he is no great loser under any cir- 

 cumstances ; for if he, from some constitutional cause, 

 is not good enough for a hunter, he makes him into a 

 first-rate harness-horse: the one that does make a 

 hunter shows him a great deal of amusement for a 

 season or two, and then he is asked to take three or 

 four hundred for him. Men of this known judgment 

 never have occasion to offer their horses for sale : it 



B 4 



