Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: by mere mechanical practice or by an unscientific system of teaching which is very little better. What will be the consequence if a grown man, being anxious to become a horseman, can be shown how to use, not only his limbs and muscles, but his reason and memory for the purpose ? I answer that in a month he will be perfectly easy upon an ordinary horse, and that in three months he will possess as perfect a seat as his natural aptitude for riding would have permitted him to acquire if he had passed his whole life in the saddle. How, it may be asked, is this to be done ? I answer, simply by attending to one thing at a time. You want to learn how to sit a horse. Very good; then put aside for the present all anxiety about managing and guiding him. Your present business is, wherever he may go and whatever he may do, to continue steady upon his back. Therefore leave it to some one else to take care that he goes where he ought and does nothing which he ought not. You are at present in the situation of a landsman going to sea, and must not think about steering until you have got your sea legs. You have only to take a lesson in an ordinary riding-school to learn how necessary this advice unfortunately is. Your instructor first screws you by main force into what is to you a most unnatural position, and next gives you certain instructions which you cannot understand. In this state of bodily and mental discomfiture you walk twice or thrice round the school, and then your troubles begin. ' Trot. Steady, Mr. So-and-so. Keep him in hand. Guide him into the corners. Don't let him canter. A little faster. Press him with the legs. Touch him with the whip. Too fast. Pull him up. Halt—halt—halt! Never mind, Sir; mount him again—you will soon catch the knack of it.' And so no doubt you would, if ...