Of course a horse is not a perfect hunter until he has had a small amount (for he does not require much) of experience in leaping; but as, with the exception of water, every horse is able, willing, and eager to jump, generally speaking, more than is desired, his rider has merely to teach the noble animal beneath him to add to his valour just enough discretion to induce him to look, not _before_, but _while_ he leaps.
A hunter when following hounds is so excited, that if, in addition to his own eagerness, he be hurried at his fences, he rushes more and more recklessly at them, until he gets into needless trouble. On the other hand, just as he approaches every fence, if he be always patted on the neck, and gently restrained, he feels satisfied that he is to be allowed to do the job; and accordingly, curtailing his stride as he approaches, he does it not only cleverly, but without any waste of exertion, which, to use a common hunting-field expression, "he may want before the day's over."
When a horse is enabled, like a soldier whose stiff stock has just been unbuckled, to drop his head to its natural position, he not only goes safely, but, without risk of cutting his fetlocks, he can gallop over ground deeply covered with loose impediments of any description; and, accordingly, in Surrey it has long been a hunting axiom that it is the curb bridles which by throwing hunters on their haunches in a false position cause them to cut their back sinews with those sharp flints which, in a snaffle bit, they can clatter over without injury. A good Northamptonshire rider, in lately taking a fence, jumped over it into a stone quarry. Now, if he had been in the bent attitude we have described, he must inevitably have pitched on, and have fractured his skull. From, however, sitting correctly on his saddle, his ankles, and not his head, suffered.
In like manner when Mehemet Ali, under the pretence of investing his son, Toossoon Pacha, with the command of an army, by a treacherous invitation inveigled the Mamelukes into the summit of the citadel of El Kahira (the Victorious), commonly called Cairo, and then suddenly dropping the portcullis, directed upon them from barred windows on three sides a murderous fire, Amyn Bey, rather than submit to such a death, spurring his Arab charger over his writhing comrades, and across the low crenated wall, jumped over a precipice of about fifty feet; and yet, although of the horse it may truly be said that