In the first place, then, it is necessary that the professor of equitation should be one who has been regularly brought up to his business. If such a man is not within reach, then I submit that it is better to entrust the riding education of the young lady to any staid middle-aged gentleman who is a thoroughly good horseman, and who will undertake the task _con amore_. If the gentleman has daughters of his own, all the better. I do not recommend young men for the office, because, naturally enough, they are more likely to be engrossed with the charms of their pupils than the progress they are making with their riding. Youthful preceptors, too, have a tendency to "make the pace a trifle too good," and there are not even wanting instances where they have "bolted" with their pupils altogether. This by the way. To return to the professional riding master. I may add that, in addition to thoroughly understanding his craft, he should be a man of education and a gentleman. Of such men there are several in the metropolis; in the provinces they are few and far between. In most of our fashionable watering-places one sees very neatly got-up horsey-looking men, duly booted, spurred, and moustached, tittuping along with a small troop of young ladies, who, with their skirts ballooned out with the fresh breeze from the "briny," and "sitting all over the saddle," are making themselves very uncomfortable, when they could have enjoyed the bracing air just as well, for less money, in an open fly. The riding master, in all probability, has promoted himself from the office of pad groom. He knows how to saddle and turn out a lady's horse, and how to put the lady into the saddle; he knows, also, the cheapest market in which to go for fashionable-looking screws upon which to mount his customers. There his qualifications as a riding master end. The inductive steps by which a lady should be taught, the reason for everything she is asked to do, the "aids" by which she should control her horse and establish a good understanding with him, are all sealed mysteries to the stamp of man I speak of. From such men and their ten-pound screws there is nothing to be learnt in the way of riding.