olt is browsing a hedge. Quiet riding must do the rest, the
main thing to keep the colt straight on, or to turn him, being the stick
shown instantly on either side by the turn of the wrist.

Thus far the _practice_ of colt-breaking; and in this way the colt will
be very easily _tackled_: I do not expect so easily to tackle his rider,
but I will try.

[Sidenote: Sermon to the colt-breaker.]

[Sidenote: The noblest horse resists the most.]

[Sidenote: Has a _right_ to resist.]

As Lord Pembroke remarks in his admirable treatise, his hand is the best
who gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose
indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose
gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The noblest
animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the
poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the noblest, because it is
ever the noblest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of
man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a
restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature the _right_
to resist; and that, _at least, as far as he can judge_, we have not
the right to insist.

When the stag is taken in the toils, the hunter feels neither surprise
nor anger at his struggles and alarm; and indeed he would be very
unreasonable were he to chastise the poor animal on account of them. But
there is no more reason in nature why a horse should submit, without
resistance, to be ridden, than the stag to be slain--why the horse
should give up his liberty to us, than the stag his life. In both cases
our "wish is father to the deed." And if our arrogance insinuates that a
bountiful Nature created these animals simply for our service, assuredly
bountiful Nature left them in ignorance of the fact. And it is to the
sportsman and the colt-breaker that we must apply, if we wish to know
whose victims are the most willing. Not to the cockney casuist, whose
knowledge of the stag is confined to his venison, and who never trusts
himself on the horse till it has been "long trained, in shackles, to
procession pace." If he did, he would find that the unfettered
four-year-old shows precisely the same alarm and resistance to the
halter as the stag does to the toils; and in breaking horses, the thing
to be aimed at, next to the power of indicating our wishes, is the power
of winning obedience to those wishes. These, and these only, a