he non-riding races with whom they
came in contact. Some, doubtless, remember how in the wars between
Alfred and the Danes, "the army" (the Scandinavian invaders) again and
again horse themselves, steal away by night from the Saxon infantry, and
ride over the land (whether in England or in France), "doing unspeakable
evil." To that special instinct of horsemanship, which still
distinguishes their descendants, we may attribute mainly the Scandinavian
settlement of the north and east of England. Some, too, may recollect
the sketch of the primeval Hun, as he first appeared to the astonished
and disgusted old Roman soldier Ammianus Marcellinus; the visages "more
like cakes than faces;" the "figures like those which are hewn out with
an axe on the poles at bridge-ends;" the rat-skin coats, which they wore
till they rotted off their limbs; their steaks of meat cooked between the
saddle and the thigh; the little horses on which "they eat and drink, buy
and sell, and sleep lying forward along his narrow neck, and indulging in
every variety of dream." And over and above, and more important
politically, the common councils "held on horseback, under the authority
of no king, but content with the irregular government of nobles, under
whose leading they force their way through all obstacles." A race--like
those Cossacks who are probably their lineal descendants--to be feared,
to be hired, to be petted, but not to be conquered.

Instances nearer home of free equestrian races we have in our own English
borderers, among whom (as Mr. Froude says) the farmers and their farm-
servants had but to snatch their arms and spring into their saddles and
they became at once the Northern Horse, famed as the finest light cavalry
in the world. And equal to them--superior even, if we recollect that
they preserved their country's freedom for centuries against the superior
force of England--were those troops of Scots who, century after century,
swept across the border on their little garrons, their bag of oatmeal
hanging by the saddle, with the iron griddle whereon to bake it; careless
of weather and of danger; men too swift to be exterminated, too
independent to be enslaved.

But if horsemanship had, in these cases, a levelling tendency it would
have the very opposite when a riding tribe conquered a non-riding one.
The conquerors would, as much as possible, keep the art and mystery of
horsemanship hereditary among themselves, and become a Ritter