TIMIDITY OR OBSTINACY DIFFICULT TO MANAGE. 311 stable till he had forgotten the injudicious treatment; and it would very likely take as much time and trouble to restore his confidence as it would take to make him do what was wanted had he been more properly treated. This makes it so difficult to teach nervous, fidgetty, timid horses. The sight of a whip or stick so alarms them that they become confused, and are then incapable of learning. A horse knows these are instruments by which he can be punished, and it is proper and necessary that he should do so; but he must have naturally, or be brought to that state of confidence in himself and with us as only to regard them with fear in case he is aware that he has done wrong, or contemplates doing so, for we must use them as signals and aids; and if. he is so timid as always to be apprehensive of punishment the moment he sees them, he is perpetually thinking merely of how to get out of their reach, and consequently will not attend to any thing else. A horse that has any thing bordering on obstinacy in his disposition is very difficult to teach; not but that the greatest obstinacy is to be overcome by time, patience, ingenuity of contrivance, reward, and punishment. But the difficulty of dealing with so perverse an animal is this: his bad and obstinate temper makes him dislike to do any thing that his inclination does not prompt him to do: he resists: to overcome his wilfulness we may be forced to have recourse to punishment more or less: this rouses all the energies of a bad disposition, and he turns sulky or vicious. We must then either leave him master of the field, or, by deprivation and the agency of fear, deter him from showing or putting in practice his vicious propen sities. He will not learn any thing but submission by all this, and very probably not that to any useful extent: so, before we can render him obedient, it is most likely he has become so sullen in temper that nothing can be done with him as a horse for exhibition. I have heard some old persons speak of a horse named Chiliby. This animal was a perfect savage, and would worry any one attempting to approach him. It was contemplated to bait him with bull-dogs, and I believe advertisements or handbills were pub lished to that effect; but the legislature most probably interfered, and prevented the revolting exhibition. He was then either given to or bought by Astley, the first founder of the theatre still known by his name. . He tamed this savage so far as to exhibit him in the ring, and when tied down by bearing, gag, and side, reins, he permitted himself to be ridden by the late Mrs. Bland, then Miss Romanzini, but nothing more than this could be made of him. I have been told, that, though when covered by the large saddle and saddle-cloths he looked showy enough, he was a mere skeleton. Astley was accused of cruelty towards this horse, and I believe gained less credit than odium by his exhibition. I quite agree with the public opinion that it would have been far better to shoot such an animal; but if it was thought advantageous or desirable to tame so thoroughly inexorable a brute, nothing but lowering his general system by deprivation of nourishment and rest, could keep his indomitable temper and ferocity within bounds; for though I am quite certain that in nine cases in ten kindness will succeed with a bad temper much better than severity, I have no doubt kindness was in the first instance tried with this horse till it was found of no effect. I was once FIT FOR A BUTCHER. 313 very near buying a horse not much better as to temper. A butcher at a watering-place where I was staying had a remarkably neat horse, a particularly fine goer: he had often attracted my attention, but I felt satisfied there was something wrong about the horse, or he would never have got into such hands. I questioned the butcher about him, stating I should like to purchase him. The man had the honesty to tell me the horse would be of no use to me if I did, unless I treated him as he did, which was, either in or out of harness, to keep him going all day and every day; for if he was to give him one day's rest, he could do nothing with him the next. I was not, however, deterred by this, but resolved to have him; and but for the following circumstance I certainly should have bought him. He picked up a nail, so the butcher was obliged to rest him. I begged to be present when he was next put to work. I was so; and of all the unruly brutes I ever saw he was the worst: he would neither carry nor draw. I then asked his master what he meant to do? He said, "Serve him as I did when I got him, give him nothing to eat till he goes quiet, and then keep him at it." He did so, and when I next saw the horse, there certainly could be no complaint made of his having too much carcase. That horses intended for exhibition are sometimes subject to this sort of deprivation is quite certain, and that in cases where there is no vice to complain of; for some horses are so volatile in their disposition, that, if they are not a little lowered, their very exuberance of spirits would prevent their being taught, and a little deprivation is in fact kindness, as doing away with the necessity of severe punishment. A person accustomed to rich dishes and a bottle of wine a day would certainly find his animal spirits much lowered if he was kept for a week on tea and bread and butter; still it could not be called suffering. Even in the common circumstance of breaking a horse to harness, if he was very high in condition and we found him jumping and kicking at every thing he met, before putting him in harness the judicious thing would be to stop his oats, keep him on bran mashes for two or three days, give him a dose of physic, and, while thus lowered in temperament, give him his first lesson. If this was oftener done than it is, a great deal of trouble would be saved, and much risk avoided both in respect to the animal and those about him. Great as is the difference of tempers in horses, the difference between them in point of intellect is to the full as much. I in no way exceed the fact when I say that some horses can be taught that in ten days which it would require ten weeks to teach others: some have a peculiar capacity for learning, while others have merely the ordinary instinct of the brute, nor can they learn any thing beyond what the common impulses of nature prompt them to do. Astley had a piebald mare in whom the capacity for learning was exemplified in a most extraordinary degree. He was so well aware of this, that whenever any trick or act most difficult to teach a horse had to be taught, the mare was always selected for the pur. pose. From first coming into his possession she had always shown this extraordinary aptness; but from having learned so many things this gift was increased to a degree that could not be conceived by any one but those in the habit of instructing her. She knew as well when any thing new was wanted of her as the A MISTRESS OF HER PROFESSION. 315 performers did themselves: showing her a few times what she was wanted to do was enough; nor did she want the constant practice most horses require to keep them perfect in their performance, she seemed never to forget what she had once learned. One of the most remarkable specimens of docility that I conceive could be shown by a horse this mare exhibited. She represented the High-mettled Racer, a piece that had a prodigious run. The parts of the racer, the hunter, post-horse, and mill-horse which she acted, could have been taught to most horses; but as a finale, she was brought in on a common knacker's cart, lying as we daily see dead horses in the streets on such vehicles. This situation is so perfectly unnatural to a horse that not one in a hundred could be brought to submit to it. But this not all: her head and limbs hung in all the immobility of death: the shafts of the cart were then raised from the horse's back that drew it, and the mare was thus shot from it on the stage. She never moved; and when her legs were lifted up by some one on the stage, she let them fall precisely as the limb of a dead animal would do. This, I should say, must be one of the most difficult pieces of acting that could possibly be to make an animal comprehend: no force, punishment, or fear could have been used in this case, for the desideratum was to banish fear nothing but time and extraordinary patience on the part of her teachers could have reconciled her to this: she was in the finest condition, and always fat, which horses will not be, feed them as you will, if kept in a state of alarm or much worried by what is done to them: in fact, if they are, they most probably will not feed. These horses, like other horses, and indeed human pupils, are corrected if they do wrong; that is, if, |