STARTING
,—in horses, is an imperfection, if it becomes habitual, that is of the most dangerous description. It is exceedingly different from a horse skittish, wanton, and playful only, for which the rider is always prepared; and if a good horseman, it is generally as pleasing to one as to the other. But when a horse is eternally in fear, and alarmed at every object unlike himself, he not only sometimes snorts and stops suddenly in the midst of a rapid career of either trot or gallop, but, by an instantaneous spring of five or six feet, brings the rider over his head, or dismounts him on one side or the other. It is not at all matter of surprise, that most of the young horses brought from the country, should at first be alarmed at the infinite variety and velocity of carriages, as well as with other strange and unaccountable objects, to which they must have been entirely unaccustomed before they reached the environs of the Metropolis. Horses of this description, (good-tempered, and not viciously inclined,) are never known to be long so disposed, provided they are treated tenderly, and encouraged mildly to pass the object by which they have been so suddenly, accidentally, and perhaps unnecessarily, alarmed; but when the fools who ride them permit passion and inhumanity to predominate over reason, obstinacy on one side often begets opposition on the other, and accident or death frequently ensues; in confirmation of which, the following fact may be applicably introduced, as a check to the impetuosity of those heroes on horseback, with which every road, and every country, so plentifully abound.
Some few years since, a medical practitioner, of much celebrity in the town of Putney, not many miles from London, being suddenly called from home upon a professional occasion, happened to meet a broad wheel waggon upon the turnpike road, at which the horse being greatly terrified, immediately started, and sprung to a considerable distance, producing, in fact, no small degree of alarm and passionate mortification in the rider; who most inconsiderately adopted the usual mode of attempting to obtain by violence, what might have been probably acquired in an equal space of time with patience and philosophy. Not affording time to recollect that the horse had his sensations of joy, fear, surprise, and dread of danger, in an equal degree with himself, he immediately proceeded to the use of whip and spur, till the horse approached the waggon, which the poor complying animal no sooner did, in obedience to his master, than a sudden gust of wind passing under the tilt, raised it in such a manner just in the face of the horse, that so strange and aweful a renewal of the first alarm repeated the start, and with such violence, that the rider was dismounted, and the wheels going over his body, he lost his life upon the spot. A retention of this transaction in the memory of every juvenile or inexperienced reader, may, perhaps, prove an applicable preventive to unmanly passion at the very moment of its intentional exertion.