tral, and for military purposes enough has been said to show that this is its proper position. Nothing can be more certain than this, that it is the saddler, and not the instructor of equitation, that can most effectually and certainly produce the uniformity of seat which is so desirable; but unfortunately few people ever think of this. The sum of the whole matter is this-the larger the surfaces of the rider and saddle brought into permanent contact, the firmer will be the seat, and the less will it depend on the stirrups or—the reins. The saddle-flaps serve in some cases to increase, in others they absolutely diminish, the surface of contact between the rider and horse: their chief use is to protect the man's legs from injury by the girthbuckles, straps, &c. For military saddles nothing can be more preposterous than a stiff flap interposed between the rider's leg and horse's side, because the surcingle and shabrack cover all these things effectually, and perfectly attain this object of the flap of the English civilian saddle. This stiff flap is therefore an unnecessary additional weight, and it keeps, moreover, the leg out of its proper position. To sum up the whole of the foregoing, we may describe the general rule for seats to be this, the saddle in the centre of the horse's back; the girths, stirrups, and rider about the centre of the saddle; in short, "The maxim for the horsy tribe is There are certain appendages to the saddle that require a short notice. And first of all, which is better, the blanket or the feltplate under the light cavalry saddle? The advantages of the former are, that by folding it in different ways you may vary its thickness at different points, and by this means adjust the saddle not only to all the different peculiarities presented by the backs of various horses, but also equally to the changes of form of one and the same back, induced by changes of condition. You can do nothing of the sort with the feltplate; this presupposes all horses' backs alike, which is very wide of the mark; and, moreover, each individual back permanent in its form, whatever change the condition may have undergone-which is equally so. The blanket men say "Yes; and, moreover, you can defend your horse from the cold in winter bivouacs, and keep him serviceable for a much longer time." "Ay," say the opponents; "but the man covers himself up and leaves his horse to shiver." There is probably some truth in this; and, at all events, the man is kept warm, whereas the felt can never be misappropriated in this way. The advocates of the felt say further, in cases of alarm the horses can be saddled quicker which is indisputable to a certain extent; for whether the blanket be used as a covering for the horse or man, it takes some time and two men to fold it properly if once unfolded. The result is this: if the felt happens to fit, the horse will be quickly and well saddled—if not, quickly and badly; on the other hand, two or three minutes more may insure all the horses being well saddled, provided the men know how to fold their blankets, and are made to do so. Two or three minutes may be, however, of great importance: let us endeavour to estimate their precise value. Cavalry on * The greatest possible luxury in the matter of blankets is, however, powerless to keep horses alive whose rations consist of their neighbours' tails, as in the Crimea. outpost duty never unsaddles, therefore it can suffer no loss of time on account of the blanket; and cavalry in camp or bivouac is, or at least should be, always covered by outposts, and is therefore scarcely liable to surprise, and two or three minutes can make no possible difference where it is a question of preserving the efficiency of the horses for weeks, months, and years. But the superior officers are impatient, their personal credit is involved in the turning out rapidly: ay, that's it. Let the blankets be properly folded at daybreak regularly; and let the horses be saddled too with loose girths, whether you know if you are to turn out or not, and there is an end of the blanket difficulty and of many others too. If your With regard to the crupper. saddle fit properly, and if you sit in the proper way, you don't need a crupper. If neither of these "ifs" be a verity, then the crupper may prevent the saddle running forward, but will also wound the steed's tail, or set it a-kicking, especially if a mare-perhaps, under favourable circumstances, both together; in either case you must take off the crupper, and what then? It is better to begin voluntarily with a well-fitting saddle and a good seat, than be kicked into it; and therefore the cavalry crupper is an absurdity which every one else in the world has thrown away ages ago; and the Austrian, Bavarian, and, we believe, many other German cavalries, discarded some five or six years since. The breastplate might perhaps, in most cases, be dispensed with; but in others it is useful in keeping the girths in their place; besides that, it gives a point of attachment for some of the pack, and is indubitably advantageous for lasso draught; it can do no harm, moreover, unless it be too tight, which is generally the result of cavalry commanding officers being as pedantic about the rosette attached to it being at the same height throughout their front, as infantry ones are about the mess-tins being mathematically correct on the tops of the knapsacks. 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 bewilderment 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 inanimate nature, subject to no rule, defiant of all generalisation, and, in fact, a thing per 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 easychair, with his legs tucked up at the other, till his knees are nearly on a level with the pommel; whilst a second, sitting in his fork, sticks out his legs as stiff and as far away from 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 |