Get into the saddle, leap on a thorough-bred horse, if you have got one. Never mind his spoiling you for every other animal of meaner race, and come for a “spin” up the Ride from Hyde Park Corner to Kensington Gate, careful only to steady him sufficiently for the safety of Her Majesty’s subjects, and the inquisition, not very rigorous, of the policemen on duty. For seven months in the year, at least, this is perhaps the only mile and a half in England over which you may gallop without remorse for battering legs and feet to pieces on the hard ground. Away you go, the breeze lifting your whiskers from the very roots (I forgot, you have no whiskers, nor indeed would such superfluities be in character with the severe style of your immortal beauty). Never mind, the faster you gallop the keener and cooler comes the air. Sit well down, just feel him on the curb, let him shake his pretty head and play with his bridle, sailing away with his hind-legs under your stirrup-irons, free, yet collected, so that you could let him out at speed, or have him back in a canter within half-a-dozen strides; pat him lovingly just where the hair turns on his glossy neck like a knot in polished woodwork, and while he bends to meet the caress, and bounds to acknowledge it, tell me that dancing is the poetry of motion if you dare! Should it not be the London season—and I am of opinion that the _rus in urbe_ is more enjoyable to both of us at the “dead time of year” than during the three fashionable months—do not, therefore, feel alarmed that you will have the ride to yourself, or that if you come to grief there will be nobody to pick you up! Here you will meet some Life-Guardsman “taking the nonsense” out of a charger he hates; there some fair girl, trim of waist, blue of habit, and golden of _chignon_, giving her favourite “a breather,” ready and willing to acknowledge that she is happier thus, speeding along in her side-saddle, than floating round a ball-room to Coote and Tinney’s softest strains with the best waltzer in London for a partner.