342 
LECTURES ON HORSES. 
with every pains that can be taken with them, can never be made 
to do so with any degree of grace or perfection. Notwithstanding 
these objections, however, we deem it more consonant with ob- 
servation and practice to regard the canter as an artificial pace. 
THE WALK. 
The WALK is the pace the quadruped, by nature or habit, breaks 
into out of a state of inaction or quiescence. It is the slowest of 
the paces — that by which all the others are more or less influenced, 
and so might with reason be emphatically denominated the 'primi- 
tive or cardinal pace. The best earnest a horse can give us of 
“ what he can do” in other respects, is his walk ; a clever walker 
will perform well in his trot, and most likely in his gallop likewise : 
indeed, I have heard eminent turf-men say, it is rarely that a good 
racer is a bad walker. A horse so made that walking is either 
difficult or impossible of performance to him, without perpetual 
blundering and danger of falling, may gallop or canter to satis- 
faction, but cannot be expected to be a good trotter, the walk and 
the trot being paces requiring similar conformation and powers of 
progression. There are some people who will not look at a horse 
(for purchase) that cannot walk. For a hackney, park or pleasure 
horse, charger, and, above all, for a lady’s horse, good walking is 
indispensable ; for a hunter it is next to indispensable ; and in a 
racer highly desirable. By good walking I mean the powers or 
capabilities of walking well : a horse not in possession of that 
form and action that enables him to step properly or safely in his 
walk, I call a bad walker; and not one who has been caused to 
walk improperly or amiss, either through any mismanagement in 
the training or using of him, or any anormal condition into which 
he may have been thrown by accident or disease : the epithets 
good and bad have, in fact, reference here to natural or original 
disqualification, and not to any thing incidental or superadded. 
The physical properties foreshewing a horse to be a good walker 
must be collected principally from what has been already said about 
form, in particular of the fore legs and shoulders ; at the same time 
the hind limbs must not be overlooked, they, with the fore, con- 
curring to make the good walker. We may often, when we 
behold certain anormal or ill construction of the limbs, without 
hesitation pronounce it impossible that such a horse can walk 
well ; though we are liable to be deceived in our opinion about the 
pace being properly executed when we see form that we cannot 
help admiring. It would be, indeed, a perfection in this branch of 
our art, could we deduce action from form : although we may ven- 
ture to decry what cannot fail to perform ill, we cannot always 
