376 MODE OF TAMING AND BREAKING-IN HORSES. 
are taught to proceed step by step, according to the discipline of 
our respective schools. Some years ago, a man by the name of 
Sullivan, a horse-breaker at Cork, made a great noise in the horse 
world from his possessing the art of charming vicious horses into 
tameness and obedience ; and, from its being imagined his charm 
was imparted through whispering into the ear of the restive ani- 
mal, he was designated “ The Whisperer.” From Mr. W. Towns- 
end, however, who first gave us an account of this aural charmer 
of the equine race*, it seems pretty evident something besides 
“ whispering” took place between him and his protege; for after 
having been shut up with a horse who was unquiet to shoe for about 
half-an-hour — 'his usual practice — “ I observed,” says Mr. Towns- 
end, “that the animal seemed afraid whenever Sullivan either 
spoke or looked at him .” And I have heard from another quarter 
on which I can place implicit credence, that, at the end of the in- 
terview between Sullivan and the refractory horse, both parties 
manifested such unequivocal signs of agitation and exhaustion as 
left no doubt whatever of some most severe contest having taken 
place between them. 
M. Leonard, the hero of our present narrative, disdains all secrecy. 
He hesitates not to declare and manifest to the world that his mode 
of taming and breaking consists in inspiring a fear, which may 
truly be called terror, into the breast of the wild or vicious animal, 
under the. full influence of which that whereto the animal has 
shewn the greatest repugnance or dread beforehand is to be re- 
ceived or approached with perfect calmness and resignation, 
though not, perhaps, with entire intrepidity. M. Leonard pro- 
fesses by his art not only to break-in horses of any age, temper, 
or vicious propensity, but to tame wild beasts as well, of the most 
ferocious nature, with not more than three or four notable excep- 
tions, one of which I understood to be the rliinocerost. 
The first exhibitions of this great tamer of beasts, wild and 
domestic, took place at Mr. Field’s establishment in Oxford-street. 
The one at which I was by mere accident present came off in the 
riding-school at the barracks in Hyde Park. On my admission 
into the school — where I found a few of the military and some 
half-dozen persons in plain clothes — I saw M. Leonard, whom 1 
immediately recognised from having seen him enter just before, 
standing with four or five assistants in a ring around a well-bred 
* In the Statistical Survey of the County of Cork. 
■f* The hyena I believe to be another. M. Leonard kept two dogs shut 
up for ten days with a piece of liver before them, which, being instructed 
not to eat, they refrained from touching until the time arrived when they 
were visited, and had permission given them to consume the liver, and then 
they ravenously ate it up. 
