ou can safely, if ever, depend on your own judgment in choosing
a horse. And, after all, a natural talent for comparison and eye for
proportion are only the gift of a few. Some men have horses all their
lives, and yet scarcely know a good animal from a bad one, although they
may know what they like to drive, or ride or hunt. The safe plan is to
distrust your own judgment until you feel you have had experience enough
to choose for yourself.

Hacks for long distances are seldom required in England in these railway
days. A town hack should be good-looking, sure-footed, not too tall, and
active, for you are always in sight, you have to ride over slippery
pavement, to turn sharp corners, and to mount and dismount often.
Rarey's system of making the horse obey the voice, stand until called,
and follow the rider, may easily be taught, and is of great practical
value thus applied. A cover or country hack must be fast, but need not
be so showy in action or handsome as a town hack--his merit is to get
over the ground.

Teach your hack to walk well with the reins loose--no pace is more
gentlemanly and useful than a good steady walk. Any well-bred screw can
gallop; it is the slow paces that show a gentleman's hack.

If on a long journey, walk a quarter of a mile for every four you trot
or canter, choosing the softest bits of road or turf.

Do not permit the saddle to be removed for at least half an hour after
arriving with your horse hot. A neglect of this precaution will give a
sore back.

A lady's horse, beside other well-known qualifications of beauty and
pace, should be up to the lady's weight. It is one of the fictions of
society that all ladies eat little and weigh little. Now, a saddle and
habit weigh nearly three stone, a very slim lady will weigh nine, so
there you reach twelve stone, which, considering how fond young girls
are of riding fast and long over hard roads, is no mean weight. The best
plan is to put the dear creatures into the scales with their saddles,
register the result, and choose a horse calculated to be a good stone
over the gross weight. How few ladies remember, as for hours they canter
up and down Rotten Row, that that famous promenade is a mile and a
quarter in length, so ten turns make twelve miles and a half.

The qualifications of a hunter need not be described, because all those
who need these hints will, if they have common sense, only take hunters
like servants, with established characters o