When a lot of riders find themselves in this hopeless attitude, they generally, according to their amount of activity, crawl, jump, or vault from their saddles to descend on foot, which they soon find very little improves their case, for the heels of their boots not being, like horse-shoes, concave, take insufficient hold of the turf; and thus while they are slipping, sliding, and tottering in the descent, each linked to a quadruped that is bothering him to death, if, feeling a little alarmed, they resolve to stop for a moment or two, their impatient horses, unable to advance and unwilling to stand still, often compromise the matter by running round their masters, with the chance of rolling them, like ninepins, down the hill.
In galloping for many hours, and especially for many days, as soon as the muscles of the rider, by getting tired, lose their obstinacy, it becomes impossible for him, if he sits upright, to prevent his body undulating, to the infinite relief of both parties, with every movement of the horse; whereas, if, like an English jockey, whose seat is well adapted for galloping at the utmost speed for a few minutes, he rides like a frog on a shovel, he inflicts upon his whole frame, as well as upon the poor animal that carries him, an amount of unnecessary fatigue which prematurely tires both.
For the foregoing reasons if gentlemen sportsmen who occupy on the road and the hunting-field this false position, would but allow Mr. Calcraft, in his peculiar way, to lift them about half a dozen times a few inches into the air, and then, as a tallow-chandler dips his candles, lower them gently, easily, and perpendicularly to their saddles, they would find themselves promoted in the world to a seat on horseback which they would never wish to abandon.
As, however, our readers, we fear, must have become very tired of the saddle, we will now relieve them from hogskin, to submit to them a very few practical observations on the management of the bridle, the ordinary uses of which, as everybody knows, are twofold, namely, first to guide a horse, and secondly to restrain, or, when requisite, to stop him.
As it is the disposition of a horse, when mounted, to go fast, and as it is the disposition of a man to pull at any thing in this world as little as possible, curb-bits and curb-chains (as their names truly denote) have been invented, by which the animal in all his movements on parade or on the road is slightly thrown on his haunches, with his head raised more or less above its natural level. In this position his eyes are of course proportionally elevated, and as there exists no obstruction on the macadamized roads, &c., on which he travels, he soon ceases to look downwards; and although, if he then happens to pass over a little hole, he may put a foot into it, or may slightly blunder over half a shovelfull of loose stones which had escaped his observation, yet, if he has good action, and a tolerable rider, he earns the character of being a "capital hack."