Horsemanship - Page 2

making them bold and expert horsemen; and
these were the days when old Christy, the huntsman, enjoyed great
importance, as the lads were put under his care to practise them at the
leaping-bars, and to keep an eye upon them in the chase.

The squire always objected to their using carriages of any kind, and is
still a little tenacious on this point. He often rails against the
universal use of carriages, and quotes the words of honest Nashe to that
effect. "It was thought," says Nashe, in his Quaternio, "a kind of
solecism, and to savour of effeminacy, for a young gentleman in the
flourishing time of his age to creep into a coach, and to shroud himself
from wind and weather: our great delight was to out-brave the blustering
boreas upon a great horse; to arm and prepare ourselves to go with Mars
and Bellona into the field was our sport and pastime; coaches and
caroches we left unto them for whom they were first invented, for ladies
and gentlemen, and decrepit age and impotent people."

The squire insists that the English gentlemen have lost much of their
hardiness and manhood since the introduction of carriages. "Compare," he
will say, "the fine gentleman of former times, ever on horseback, booted
and spurred, and travel-stained, but open, frank, manly, and chivalrous,
with the fine gentleman of the present day, full of affectation and
effeminacy, rolling along a turnpike in his voluptuous vehicle. The
young men of those days were rendered brave, and lofty, and generous,
in their notions, by almost living in their saddles, and having their
foaming steeds 'like proud seas under them.' There is something," he
adds, "in bestriding a fine horse, that makes a man feel more than
mortal. He seems to have doubled his nature, and to have added to his
own courage and sagacity the power, the speed, and stateliness of the
superb animal on which he is mounted."

"It is a great delight," says old Nashe, "to see a young gentleman with
his skill and cunning, by his voice, rod, and spur, better to manage and
to command the great Bucephalus, than the strongest Milo, with all his
strength; one while to see him make him tread, trot, and gallop the
ring; and one after to see him make him gather up roundly; to bear his
head steadily; to run a full career swiftly; to stop a sudden lightly;
anon after to see him make him advance, to yorke, to go back and side
long, to turn on either hand; to gallop the gallop galliard; to do the
capriole, the chambetta, and dance the curvetty."

In conformity to these ideas, the squire had them all on horseback at an
early age, and made them ride, slap-dash, about the country, without
flinching at hedge or ditch, or stone