FRENCH HORSEMANSHIP 287 



wrist. All this is changed. I feel certain that had it been 

 our lot to be translated into a gallop over the Berkshire banks, 

 the military would have given an excellent account of them- 

 selves. One young officer in particular, on a sticky, inquisi- 

 tive, clean-bred chestnut horse, rode the actual line of hounds 

 all day, and squeezed him in and out of the man-traps of the 

 rock-strewn Yallee de la Sole in a way which looked like getting 

 the very last stride out of a Lanercost at the judge's box. 



Now, a word or two on what I will call secularised French 

 riding. As far back as 1878, M. Le Jeune, in a pleasant 

 article in ' Lippincott,' devoted some attention to estabhshing 

 the existence of a bruising school of French horsemanship, 

 and he records almost controversially, in support of his 

 proposition, several moving incidents by flood and field. 

 Such, for instance, as a M. de Fully pounding two 

 Lincolnshire fox-hunters in Le Berri by swimming the 

 Creuse on a cold November day, and of the same gentleman 

 — who appears to have been quite a customer — being all but 

 drowned in a mill-race. And here it may be observed that 

 the French are almost over-conscious of the fact that a well- 

 rided forest involves a lack of suitable risk and adventure. 

 It was evidently supposed that every Englishman is thirst- 

 ing for a five-barred gate or some equally congenial obstacle. 

 Most courteous apologies were frequently made to me for the 

 absence of these luxuries, and as nothing I could say to the 

 contrary seemed to dispel this flattering hypothesis of my 

 habits, I at last threw myself into the spirit of the thing, 

 acquiesced in all sorts of foolhardy desires, and rode over some 

 enormous places in the course of much conversation. In- 

 deed, when at last we got out into the open I was quite 

 reheved at seeing there was nothing to jump. 



But to go back to M. Le Jeune's contention. Without 

 in any way generalising from the signal exploits of indi- 

 viduals, I feel there can be little doubt that the old school of 



