in the galloping way than Jack approved, for he sent up his heels, put down his head, and over it the boy came. Jack most uncourteously left without taking leave, and came home at a pace that said "Swaffham for ever!" Some friends dined with me next day, and our conversation about two horses they had ridden to my house ended in my taking the shine out of them, by saying I had a jackass, that, give him two hundred yards, should beat either of their horses a mile next day. This put them on their mettle, and the bet ran thus-if they beat, Jack was theirs: if Jack beat, they engaged to give a ten pound note for him. Jack was treated next morning to two runs home loose, pursued by a man on horseback smacking a good sounding hunting-whip after him. In the afternoon my friends came, and we went to the place of starting. Jack knew it well. Now my friends expected the boy who rode him up to the start would also ride him home. No such thing: his saddle was taken off: the bridle (made ready) at the word " go was slipped off, and, as before, away came Jack, giving the immortal twirl of the tail, and an occasional kick up, with an accompaniment not to be mentioned to ears polite. I do not think they gained twenty yards on him. I must allow they both laughed too heartily all the way to do their best; but if they had, they could not have caught him. I pocketted my note, and they made a note, not too much to underrate donkey speed in future.

I hope my reader is interested enough in Jack to wish to know what was his after-fate. I can only give this much of it: my friends gave him to a friend to carry his son; but I am sorry to say, Jack, like many people, did not know when he was well off;

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THE HIGH-METTLED Racer's A HACK," ETC. ETC. for after pitching little master over his head, he was sold to a travelling tinker: it was then with my racer Jack, as it often is with many another crack"Bellows to mend."

Let us now return to the Cup-horse I said I should be inclined to purchase as a hunter. Having made no figure as a two, or three, or four years old among first-rate horses, nor at five having done enough to warrant his being kept as a useful second-rater, no doubt his master will be willing enough to do what he ought to have done two years before, sell him for the best price he could get. In this way a really fine five-year-old horse may often be got at fifty pounds less than he could have been bred for. But the purchaser must not of course think he has bought a hunter. He might as well suppose, because he had bought the proper quantity of cloth, that he had got a coat; he must get the tailor: so for the horse, we must get the horseman, with head, hands, and heels, to make the hunter; upon these will the perfection of the coat and the hunter depend. I have heard persons say that thorough-bred horses were seldom good leapers: how in the name of common sense should they be? they have never been taught to be so. They can, like all animals, jump if they please in a wild way; but to do it safely, coolly, and scientifically, must be taught them. They can jump well enough, high and wide enough for anything they want in a state of nature: but to take all kinds of artificial fences well is a perfection to be learnt. Of course no race-horse knows anything about it: he has been placed in situations where he never was permitted to attempt to jump, nor as long as he continues a race-horse will he ever be. I dare say neither Bee's-wing nor Catherina would take a common hurdle

with a man on their back willingly; nor would Bran, or Ratcatcher, or Sir Hercules: but supposing the three latter were not as racers what they were, had I been fortunate enough to have got them, I rather think, that after I had had them six months, I could on them with hounds have been there or thereabouts. So far from being thorough-bred militating against a horse being a fencer, I maintain it to be a great point in his favour. Thorough-bred horses are generally better made for spring and propelling powers in their quarters than other horses. This is just what we want to make a leaper; their only fault is one that a little judgment and patience will rectify, the want of having been taught. The great requisites for a hunter are speed, spring, wind, and durability: all these the thorough-bred possesses beyond all comparison in greater perfection than other horses. Why, then, should they not make hunters? Only, as I before said, get them strong enough. Seventy-four knew nothing of fencing when he was first put to steeple-racing, and I believe was particularly awkward at it; but he learned to jump afterwards; so they will all with practice. I do not mean practice with hounds: this, till he knows something about it, I consider the worst practice a young horse can have. He is in a hurry, and the rider is in a hurry; consequently the thing is done in a hurried and slovenly manner, if done at all; and at best he only gets over somehow. One month's practice, taking the horse out with another, where you can pick proper fences for him, and bring him on from one thing to another, will teach him more than six months with hounds. They need not be large ones either: the horse, after having been taught to jump coolly and to

a certainty eight or nine feet of water, will afterwards, when excited with hounds, jump fifteen: if he does not, I fear the fault will be in the rider, not the horse.

I have seen a good round number of falls with hounds, and have had enough myself to satisfy any reasonable man. I speak, therefore, from observation and practice, when I assert, that where one fall occurs from large spreading fences (if within the bounds of reason), twenty take place at blind awkward small ones. It is to teach the horse how to manage these that requires practice, and this it would take a very considerable time to teach him with hounds. We may in the course of a run come to a fence where the ditch is so filled by briers as to be all but imperceptible: we ride him at it; most probably he gets over, but he has gained no lesson or experience by this; he is not aware he has escaped a trap: but if we had taken him out, we will say shooting (and nothing makes a fencer sooner), he would probably have been led over twenty such in the course of the morning, for I would look out for such for him; he would perhaps have blundered into three or four; and, finding a bed of brambles and thorns is not a bed of roses, that one day would make him careful of such for life: and so on with other descriptions of difficult places. Fair hunting fences he will of course be rode over; and doing these when he has nothing to distract his attention from his business which is the leap-will teach him to do them properly, and that in a very short time. Once taught to do this, he is a hunter for ever, and a master of his business.

Of all things timber is what a horse should be made the most perfect in taking, and get the most practice at; first, because a mistake at stiff timber is more

ANCIENT LAWS AND MODERN LAWS.

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fatal in its consequences than at any other fence; and, secondly, it is a description of one that requires on the part of a horse exertions the least natural to him. Brooks or dry ravines are things he would meet with in a state of nature. If galloping in a wild state he came to one of these, and was excited, he would as naturally extend his stride or bound to twenty feet as he had taken twelve in his gallop; but timber is quite a different affair. Dame Nature, capital workwoman as she is in making an oak tree or an heir to an estate, never made a five-barred gate in her existence; consequently she never gave a horse an idea of jumping one.

In practising horses at a leaping-bar, I have often been astonished at the absurdities and wanton severity I have seen used. It is very common to see a naked bar so adjusted as to fall in case a horse should hit it. Now this is the very time when it should be immoveable: the allowing a bar to give way will spoil all the horses in the world: if he is a young or unpractised one, we are positively teaching him to knock down or attempt to knock down timber whenever he sees it, instead of clearing it. How is a horse to know we want him to jump over what he finds it easier to knock down? And then, if he does knock it down, he is often severely flogged for what he does not know is wrong. A bar should be well clothed with furze: this teaches a horse it is not to be touched with impunity: it should then be confined so as in one respect to be like the law of the Medes and Persians, not to be moved; while in another it should, like some laws near home, be left so as to be rolled backwards or forwards, just as may suit the will of the higher powers. But though it may do this, let a