the case. If, indeed, you pull his head towards the object of his alarm, and oblige him to face it, there is every probability that he will run blindly backward from it. And while his whole attention is fixed before him, he will go backward over Dover cliff if it chance to be behind him. Under such circumstances you cannot too rapidly turn your horse's head and his attention from the fancied, to the substantial ill. But on common occasions the turning his head from what he shies at should be as gradual and imperceptible as possible. No chastisement should be allowed in any case. If he makes a start, you should endeavour not to make a return start. You should not, indeed, take more notice of a shy than you can possibly avoid; and unless the horse has been previously brutalised, and to re-assure him, you should not even caress him, lest even that should make him suspect that something awful is about to happen. The common error is the reverse of all this. The common error is to pull the horse's head towards the object of his fear, and when he is facing it, to begin with whip and spur. Expecting

The restive horse.

to be crammed under the carriage-wheel, the horse probably rears or runs back into a ditch, or at least becomes more nervous and more riotous at every carriage that he meets. Horses are instantaneously made shy by this treatment, and as instantaneously cured by the converse of it. It is thus that all bad riders make all high-couraged horses shy, but none ever remain so in the hands of a good horseman.

There is a common error, both in theory and practice, with regard to the restive horse. He is very apt to rear sideways against the nearest wall or paling. It is the common error to suppose that he does so with the view of rubbing his rider off. Do not give him credit for intellect sufficient to generate such a scheme. It is that when there, the common error is to pull his head from the wall. This brings the rider's knee in contact with the wall, consequently all farther chastisement ceases; for were the rider to make his horse plunge, his knee would be crushed against the wall. The horse, finding this, probably thinks that it is the very thing desired,

and remains there; at least he will always fly to a wall for shelter. Instead of from the wall, pull his head towards it, so as to place his eye, instead of your knee, against it; continue to use the spur, and the horse will never go near a wall again.

be para

To pull a horse from what he shies at, and towards the Truth may wall he rubs you against, are very paradoxical doctrines. doxical. But, ¿ μvlos dýλo, the fable shows, that truth may be paradoxical-that we can blow hot and blow cold with the same breath; and it was only the brutal wild man of the woods who drove the civilised man from his den, for performing the feat.

E

CHAPTER IV.

MECHANICAL AID OF THE RIDER.

The rider

cannot raise the falling horse.

The rider cannot raise the falling horse.-Harm is done by the attempt.The bearing rein. -Mechanical assistance of the jockey to his horse. --Standing on the stirrups.-Difference between the gallop and the leap.-Steeple-chases and hurdle-races unfair on the horse.-The rider should not attempt to lift his horse at a fence.

There is no more common error than to believe that

the rider can hold his horse up when he is falling. How often do we hear a man assert that his horse would have been down with him forty times if he had not held him up; that he has taken his horse up between his hands and legs and lifted him over a fence; or that he has recovered his horse on the other side!

These are vulgar errors, and mechanical impossibilities. Could ten men, with hand-spikes, lift the weight of a horse? Probably. Attach the weight to the thin rein of

a lady's bridle. Could a lady lift it with the left hand? I think not; though it is commonly supposed that she could. A pull from a curb will indeed give the horse so much pain in the mouth that he will throw his head up, and this so flatters the hand that its prowess has saved him, that the rider exclaims "It may be impossible, but it happens every day. Shall I not believe my own senses?" The answer is, No, not if it can be explained how the senses are deceived. Otherwise, we should still believe, as, till some few centuries ago, the world did believe, that the diurnal motion was in the sun, and not in the earth. Otherwise we must subscribe to the

philosophy of the Turk, who

"Saw with his own eyes the moon was round,

Was also certain that the earth was square,

Because he'd journey'd fifty miles and found
No sign of its being circular anywhere."

But these errors are not harmless errors. They induce Harm is done by the an ambitious interference with the horse at the moment attempt.. in which he should be left unconfined to the use of his