A rushing horse is generally a dangerous fencer

A rushing horse is generally a dangerous fencer

A rushing horse is generally a dangerous fencer

A rushing horse is generally a dangerous fencer; but it is a trick that can only be cured in private lessons, and it is more dangerous to try to make a rusher go slowly than to let him have his own way.

The great error of young beginners is to select young horses under their weight.

It was the saying of a Judge of the old school, that all kinds of wine were good, but the best wine of all was two bottles of port! In the same style, one may venture to say that all kinds of hunting are good, but that the best of all is fox-hunting, in a grass scent-holding country, divided into large fields, with fences that may be taken in the stride of a thorough-bred, and coverts that comprise good gorse and open woods that is, for men of the weight, with the nerve, and with the horses that can shine in such a country. But it is not given to all to have or retain the nerve or to afford a stud of the style of horses required for going across the best part of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. In this world, the way to be happy is to put up with what you can get. The majority of my readers will be obliged to ride with the hounds that happen to live nearest their dwelling; it is only given to the few to be able to choose their hunting country and change their stud whenever the maggot bites them. After hard brain-work and gray hairs have told on the pulse, or when the opening of the nursery-door has almost shut the stable, a couple of hours or so once a week may be made pleasant and profitable on a thirty-pound hack for the quartogenarian, whom time has not handicapped with weight for age. I can say, from the experience of many years, that as long as you are under twelve stone, you may enjoy very good sport with such packs as the Bramham Moor in Yorkshire, the Brocklesby in Lincolnshire, the Heythrope in Oxfordshire, the Berkley or the Beaufort in Gloucestershire, without any enormous outlay for horses, for the simple reason that the average runs do not present the difficulties of grass countries, where farmers are obliged to make strong fences and deep ditches to keep the bullocks they fatten within bounds. Good-looking little horses, clever jumpers, equal to moderate weights, are to be had, by a man who has not too much money, at moderate prices; but the sixteen hands, well-bred flyer, that can gallop and go straight in such countries as the Vale of Aylesbury, is an expensive luxury. Of course I am speaking of sound horses. There is scarcely ever a remarkable run in which some well-ridden screw does not figure in the first flight among the two hundred guinea nags.