thorough-bred horses, hunting in as perfect form
as the most celebrated horsemen. He had an
iron-grey pony, forty inches high, a miniature
weight-carrying hunter, with a blood head,
which, galloping at speed, would clear a hurdle
nine inches higher than his own shoulders, and
which actually cleared a hedge and ditch fifteen
feet across. To see little D. ride this hot little
brute at the hurdle, touch the pony's croup
with his own shoulders as he leaped, and rise to
his right seat as he landed, a dozen times in
succession, was a sight which old steeple-chase
jockeys and colonels of crack cavalry regiments
wondered at and enjoyed.

The great point in teaching riding, is, that the
pupil should never learn a bad habit. Old Chifney,
according to one of his biographers, began
his lessons in the art in which his sons became
so famous, by teaching them how to hold the
bridle of a wooden horse. "Good hands," to
use a term familiar among horsemen, give and
take; bad hands hold as if the mouth were iron
and the reins to be gripped like the rounds of a
dangerous ladder.

Therefore, as soon as a boy is old enough to
understand the reason why, and has acquired a
right seat and an instinctive grip of the saddle,
put him on a pony or horse of good temper, but
courage, with a light and delicate mouth; then
he must "give and take"—a great art in life—
and he will have to govern by skill, and not rely
on strength alone.

There are boys and men who learn to ride,
and ride well, by instinct, imitation, and practice,
especially if they have good models before
their eyes, and are not spoiled early by flattering
toadies; but there are many men who never
ride with any sense at all, although they ride all
their lives. Some people seem to think that falling
off does boys good. That is not the writer's
opinion. A boy should, as a matter of course,
learn not to make a fuss about a fall, or any
other hurt or accident; and he who is not afraid
will fall the most cleverly; but the first point of
good horsemanship is not to fall until your horse
falls; the next is so to guide and hold him that
he shall fall as seldom as possible.

Many a fine boy has been cowed and spoiled
as a horseman by being put on ponies too restive
or spirited for his strength and immature seat.
But there is a mistake in the other direction.
Teaching is wasted unless principles are followed
by practice, and unless what has been learned in
the home park or the school is practised on rough
ground and across country, up and down steep
hills, across moors, and through woodland. For
this purpose there is nothing better than an
occasional day with the harriers; boys and horses
both learn to be quick to turn, to stop, and to
start again. No horseman or horsewoman is
safe who has not learned to leap real fences,
ditches, banks, and hurdles; for the quietest
horse will buck sometimes, and the slowest ride
end in an inevitable short cut.

Some people, stout of constitution and thick
of skin, dwell fondly on the happiness of their
school-days, but that is a kind of enjoyment
like a taste for bathing in the depth of winter,
or for whole bottles of port at one sitting; it is
more than every constitution can bear. For the
writer's own part, while his school-days have ever
been the subject of his most frightful dreams, in
which sometimes a schoolmaster, and sometimes
a tyrant senior, has been his nightmare, he turns
to his pony-riding days with fond delight, not
extinguished or diminished by the memory of
many an exciting gallop in the best counties
with flying hounds on horses good enough for
any one of his weight, at an age when vanity
and excitement were stronger than prudence.

No black care sits behind the boy who can
ride, who loves to read, and has just entered
on the world of poetry and romance. When well
mounted, he takes his way alone, or with a party
of young companions, galloping fast over the
turf, walking slowly through broad woodland or
over wild moors, excited, charmed, amused, full
of wild, absurd thoughts realising a thousand
romantic fancies, charging at Flodden or
flying with Lochinvar. Our earliest horsey
recollections go back to bare-legged days, when,
for our health's sake, two or three times a
week a tall dragoon (he seemed a very giant)
called to take us a ride on a black hog-maned
cross-eared pony twice a week. He used to
walk beside us, holding us for safety by the leg.
It was an ugly flat country, and our way was
almost always by the side of a canal for an hour
or so, up to a lock, where there used to be a long
talk between the military tutor and the lock-
keeper's daughter. To us he seldom addressed
a word. We often longed to go some other way;
the canal caused us undefined terrors, but we
never ventured to complain either to the
dragoon or nurse. We don't think we
enjoyed these rides, for the pony was spiteful and
did not encourage any delicate attentions; and
our chief pleasure arose from the loud admiration
we excited among ragged boys of our own age.
When are we too young or too old to be beyond
vanity?

In course of time we were promoted to ride
alone on an ugly safe and stupid pony by the
side of our parents in a gig, without, however,
turning off the main roads. But the true glories
of horsemanship were opened to us when, by
great good fortune, at about twelve years
old we caught the measles at school, and were
sent to a farm-house to recruit. Close to the
farm was one of the finest deer parks in England,
and a hall, then for more than twenty years
deserted by a great personage, the owner, for
some mysterious reason, an exile on the
Continent. Nothing was kept up except the deer,
the game, and as much of the kitchen-gardens
as it suited the head gardener to cultivate. The
pleasure-grounds were a wilderness; but to my
eyes, coming from a damp flat mining country,
they were a perfect garden of Eden. There,
glorious flowering shrubs flourished among
weeds and long grass; and hares, rabbits, and
feathered game sprang from the most
unexpected places.

The king of the place was the head game-