spurs. But a horse, after being laid down and made walk, tied up like
the zebra a few times, will seldom persist, because the moment he
attempts to rise you pull his off hind leg under him and he is
powerless.

_Leaping._--The riding-school is a bad place to teach a horse to leap.
The bar, with its posts, is very apt to frighten him; if a colt has not
been trained to leap as it should be by following its dam before it is
mounted, take it into the fields and let it follow well-trained horses
over easy low fences and little ditches, slowly without fuss, and, as
part of the ride, not backwards and forwards--always leap on the
snaffle. Our cavalry officers learn to leap, not in the school, but
"across country." Nolan tells a story that, during some manoeuvres in
Italy, an Austrian general, with his staff, got amongst some enclosures
and sent some of his aide-de-camps to find an outlet. They peered over
the stone walls, rode about, but could find no gap. The general turned
to one of his staff, a Yorkshireman, and said, "See if you can find a
way out of this place." Mr. W----k, mounted on a good English horse,
went straight at the wall, cleared it, and, while doing so, turned in
his saddle and touched his cap and said, "This way, general;" but his
way did not suit the rest of the party.

There is a good deal taught in the best military schools, well worth
time and study, which, with practice in horse-taming, would fill up the
idle time of that numerous class who never read, and find time heavy on
their hands, when out of town life.

"But a military riding-school," says Colonel Greenwood, "is too apt to
teach you to sit on your horse as stiff as a statue, to let your right
hand hang down as useless as if God had never gifted you with one, to
stick your left hand out, with a stiff straight wrist like a boltsprit,
and to turn your horse invariably on the wrong rein." I should not
venture to say so much on my own authority, but Captain Nolan says
further, speaking of the effect of the foreign school (not Baucher's),
on horses and men, "The result of this long monotonous course of study
is, that on the uninitiated the school rider makes a pleasing
impression, his horse turns, prances, and caracoles without any visible
aid, or without any motion in the horseman's upright, imposing
attitude. But I have lived and served with them. I have myself been a
riding-master, and know, from experience, the disadvantages of this
foreign se