ose whose pleasure or business it is to ride, because it is soon and
easily acquired, and, when acquired, it becomes habitual; and it is as
easy, nay, much more easy, and infinitely more safe, than bad riding."
"Good riding will last through age, sickness, and decrepitude, but bad
riding will last only as long as youth, health, and strength supply
courage; _for good riding is an affair of skill, but bad riding is an
affair of courage_."

A bold bad rider must not be merely brave; he must be fool-hardy; for he
is perpetually in as much danger as a blind man among precipices.

In riding, as in most other things, danger is for the timid and the
unskilful. The skilful rider, when apparently courting danger in the
field, deserves no more credit for courage than for sitting in an
arm-chair, and the unskilful no more the imputation of timidity for
backwardness than if without practice he declined to perform on the
tight-rope. Depend upon it, the bold bad rider is the hero.

There is nothing heroic in good riding, when dissected. The whole thing
is a matter of detail--a collection of trifles--and its principles are
so simple in theory and so easy in practice that they are despised.

It is an accomplishment that may, to a certain extent, be acquired late
in life. I know instances in both sexes of a fair firm seat having been
acquired under the pressure of necessity after forty years of age (I
could name lawyers, sculptors, architects, and sailors), but it may be
acquired with ease and perfection in youth, and it is most important
that no awkward habits should be acquired.

Children who have courage may be taught to ride almost as soon as they
can walk. On the Pampas of South America you may see a boy seven years
old on horseback, driving a herd of horses, and carrying a baby in his
arms!

I began my own lessons at four, when I sat upon an old mare in the stall
while the groom polished harness or blacked his boots. Mr. Nathaniel
Gould, who, at upwards of seventy years, and sixteen stone weight, can
still ride hunting for seven or eight hours at a stretch, mentions, in
his observations on horses and hunting,[114-*] that a nephew of his
followed the Cheshire fox-hounds at seven years of age. "His manner of
gathering up his reins was most singular, and his power of keeping his
seat, with his little legs stretched horizontally along the saddle,
quite surprising." The hero Havelock, writing to his little boy, says,
"You are now