What Wallett says of the absence of a good seat on horseback from the list of the qualifications of clowns and acrobats is true of actors, and in a greater degree, in the sense, I mean, that is attached to riding by professional entertainers of the public. The number of actors who can ride at all is comparatively small; and among those who can, and who make a decent figure in Rotten Row, there are probably not two who would venture to gallop across a stage, and much less to take part in an equestrian combat or joust. Hence it is only in the arena of a circus that Richmond wins his crown as he did at Bosworth; and, though horses were again introduced on the stage of Drury Lane in the drama of _Rebecca_, they were not ridden by the actors whose names appeared in the bills. The horses belonged to a circus company, and were ridden by the practised equestrians accustomed to bestride them—‘doubles’ of the Knight of Ivanhoe and Sir Brian Bois-Guilbert. When Bernard’s hippo-dramatic spectacle of _St George and the Dragon_ was produced at Drury Lane, under the superintendence of Ducrow, who had acquired great experience in the arrangement of equestrian cavalcades, pageants, and tableaux, there was a great deal of trouble with the supernumeraries, who were not accustomed to doing their business in the manner expected from them by so accomplished a pantomimist as the lessee of Astley’s. While the scene was being rehearsed in which the people appear excitedly before the Egyptian king, with the news of the devastation and dismay caused by the dragon, the ‘supers’ exhausted Ducrow’s not very large stock of patience, and, after making them go through their business two or three times, without any improvement, his temper burst out, in his characteristic manner. ‘Look here, you damned fools!’ he exclaimed. ‘You should rush up to the King,—that chap there—and say, “Old fellow, the dragon has come, and we are in a mess, and you must get us out of it.” The King says, “Go to Brougham,” and you all go off to Brougham; and he says, “What the devil do I know about the dragon? Go to your gods,” and your gods is that lump of tow burning on that block of timber.’ This strange address was accompanied by an exhibition of the pantomimic skill of which Ducrow possessed a greater degree than any man of his day, and which was intended to impress the subordinate actors and supernumeraries of the theatre with a correct idea of the manner in which their business should be performed.