e man, do this often in the hunting-field, before he broke
his thigh.

With respect to the best model for a seat, I recommend the very large
class who form the best customers of riding-school masters in the great
towns of England, I mean the gentlemen from eighteen to
eight-and-twenty, who begin to ride as soon as they have the means and
the opportunity, to study the style of the first-class steeplechase
jockeys and gentlemen riders in the hunting-field whenever they have the
opportunity. Almost all riding-masters are old dragoons, and what they
teach is good as far as it goes, as to general appearance and carriage
of the body, but generally the military notions about the use of a
rider's arms and legs are utterly wrong.

On this point we cannot have a better authority then that of the late
Captain Nolan, who served in the Austrian, Hungarian, and in the English
cavalry in India, and who studied horsemanship in Russia, and all other
European countries celebrated for their cavalry. He says--

"The difference between a school (viz. an ordinary military horseman)
and a real horseman is this, the first depends upon guiding and managing
his horse for maintaining his seat; the second depends upon his seat for
controlling and guiding his horse. At a _trot_ the school rider, instead
of lightly rising to the action of the horse, bumps up and down,
falling heavily on the horse's loins, and hanging on the reins to
prevent the animal slipping from under him, whilst he is thrown up in
his seat."

It is a curious circumstance that the English alone have two styles of
horsemanship. The one, natural and useful, formed in the hunting-field;
the other, artificial and military, imported from the Continent. If you
go into Rotten Row in the season you may see General the Earl of
Cardigan riding a trained charger in the most approved military
style--the toes in the stirrups, long stirrup-leathers, heels down, legs
from the knee carefully clear of the horse's sides--in fact, the balance
seat, handed down by tradition from the time when knights wore complete
armour and could ride in no other way, for the weight of the armour
rendered a fall certain if once the balance was lost; a very grand and
graceful style it is when performed by a master of the art of the length
of limb of the Earl, or his more brilliant predecessor, the late
Marquess of Anglesea. But if you go into Northamptonshire in the hunting
season, you may see the same Earl of C