CHAPTER III. 



SEATS. 



WHEN one observes the great variety of seats on 

 horseback that present themselves to our notice 

 every day, and their totally contradictory character in 

 the most important respects, a certain amount of bewil- 

 derment necessarily ensues, which resolves itself into a 

 curious dilemma. We can scarcely admit that they are 

 all wrong", and it seems equally impossible to assert that 

 they are all right ; which, then, is the right and which 

 the wrong? or is a seat on horseback something outside 

 of the laws that govern the rest of animate and inani- 

 mate nature, subject to no rule, defiant of all generaliza- 

 tion, and, in fact, a thing fer se — a sort of mysterious 

 existence beyond our ken ? What, for instance, can be 

 more contradictory than to see one man sitting at one 

 end of the saddle, as in an easy-chair, with his legs 

 tucked up at the other, till his knees are nearly on a 

 level with the pommel ; while a second, sitting in his 

 fork, sticks out his legs as stiff and as far away from the 

 the horse as he can, taking for his model what is very 

 aptly named in " Harry Lorrequer" " the pair-of-tongs- 

 across-a-stone-wall seat" — for an illustration of which 

 see Plate V. And there are no end of intermediate 

 seats between these two, with the most wonderful curv- 

 atures of the rider's back, knowing positions of the head 

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