48 A nUNTINQ STABLE. 



But to say truth, a want of confidence in his own 

 capabilities, of a secret belief that he can do any thing, 

 whether tried or untried before, as well at least as 

 any other man, if not better, is rarely the defect of 

 any American ; it certainly was not that of Percy 

 Fairfax. Nor was it, indeed, to be wondered at, that 

 he had a sufficient stock of self-reliance ; for in a youth 

 and manhood spent in many vicissitudes of tempta- 

 tion, trial, and peril, he had been many times cast 

 upon his own resources, and as they had never failed 

 him, it scarcely could be a matter of surprise that he 

 should place much reliance on his own foresight, judg- 

 ment, and execution. 



This self-reliance was not, however, the blind, stul- 

 tified, arrogant self-confidence peculiar to the ignorant, 

 vulgar, and prejudiced Yankee, who is at all times 

 ready to guess that he can do any named thing, not 

 because he has any cause to believe himself able, but 

 because he has no conception of the difficulties of the 

 thing to be done. Fairfax, on the contrary, clearly 

 b'aw the obstacles in his way before he could become a 

 thorough across-country-rider ; and not expecting to 

 electrify older and better sportsmen than himself, or 

 to astonish all Melton Mowbray "with noble horse- 

 manship," was yet confident that he should acquit 

 himself in the field, as not only to avoid ridicule or 

 censure, but to acquire for himself some credit, in an 

 arena so difficult to a foreigner by common consent of 

 all, as an English hunting-field. 



He had traveled, moreover, so long and so widely, 

 being moreover as fastidious in his perception of nice- 

 ties, and as jealously sensitive of ridicule as if he had 

 been an English nobleman, that he had attained that 

 ne plus ultra the 7iil admirari^ as perfectly as though 

 he had inherited it as his birthright, and was, there- 

 fore, trebly unlikely to be guilty of the least faux j^as, 



