[Sidenote: Different seats for different styles of riding.]
[Sidenote: Manége and Eastern seats the extremes.]
Farther than this I abstain from giving any particular directions about the seat; because, though I consider the rules here laid down for the hands as applicable to every species of riding (I have excepted the soldier with his weapon in his right hand), I think there is a peculiar seat proper to many different styles of riding. The extremes of these are the manége and the Eastern styles, both admirable in their way, and perfectly practical, but each wholly inapplicable to the performances of the other.
[Sidenote: Long stirrups are necessary for cavalry.]
What can be more perfect than the seats of M. de Kraut and the Marquis de Beauvilliers, in De la Guérinière’s work, or the engraving of M. de Nestier? But I do not think that a man in such a seat would look well, or perform well, in a five-pound saddle, over the beacon course: still less that he could lay the reins on the neck of a well-bred horse, and at full speed lie along his horse’s side, and with his own body below his horse’s back, prime and load a long Persian gun, jump up and use both hands to fire to the right or left, or over his horse’s croupe; or that he could wield a long heavy lance with the power of a Cossack; or at full gallop hurl the djerrid to the rear with the force of a Persian, and again, without any diminution of speed, pick it from the ground. On the other hand, his peculiar seat renders the Eastern horseman so utterly helpless in the performances of the manége, that he is unable to make his horse rein back, or _pass_ sideways a step. And I have seen three hundred Mussulman troops from the northern parts of Persia (each of whom would perform forty such feats as I have mentioned) take more than an hour to form a very bad parade line, in single rank. When one of them was the least too far forward, or had an interval between him and the dressing hand, however small, as he could neither make his horse rein back, nor pass sideways, he was obliged to ride out to the front, turn round to the rear, and ride into the rank afresh, and so in succession every man beyond him. This was an affair of seat; the Eastern horseman’s leg does not come low enough to give his horse what are called _sides_.