as, according to Stow (whom
Beckman follows on this point), that originally shewed the women of this
country how gracefully and conveniently they might ride on horseback
sideways. Another old historian, enumerating the new fashions of Richard
the Second's reign, observes, "Likewise, noble ladies then used high
heads and cornets, and robes with long trains, and seats, or
_side-saddles_, on their horses, by the example of the respectable
Queen, Ann, daughter of the King of Bohemia; who first introduced the
custom into this kingdom: for, before, women of every rank rode as men
do" (T. ROSSII, _Hist. Re. Ang._ p. 205). In his beautiful illustrative
picture of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, Stothard appears to have
committed an anachronism, in placing the most conspicuous female
character of his fine composition sideways on her steed. That the lady
should have been depicted riding in the male fashion, might, it strikes
us, have been inferred, without any historical research on the subject,
from the poet's describing her as having, on her feet,

"_a paire_ of spurres sharpe."

Neither the original example of Ann of Bohemia, nor that, in later days,
of Elizabeth, as female equestrians, however extensively followed, had
sufficient force, entirely to abolish, among our countrywomen, the mode
of riding like the other sex. In the time of Charles the Second, it
appears, from a passage in the Duke of Newcastle's great work on
Horsemanship, to have still, at least partially, subsisted. Another
writer of the seventeenth century, whose manuscripts are preserved in
the Harleian collection, speaks of it, as having been practised, in his
time, by the ladies of Bury, in Suffolk, when hunting or hawking; and
our venerable contemporary, Lawrence (a voluminous writer on the horse),
it is worthy of remark, states, that at an early period of his own life,
two young ladies of good family, then residing near Ipswich, _in the
same county_, "were in the constant habit of riding about the country,
in their smart doe-skins, great coats, and flapped beaver hats."

[Illustration]

Although entirely relinquished, at present, perhaps in this country, the
mode of female equestrianism under notice continues to prevail in
various other localities. In the following sketch, taken from Charles
Audry's magnificent "Ecole d' Equitation," a Persian lady is delineated
as just about to start on a journey, in the saddle; and, in the next,
which is engraved f