Skating, though both healthful and elegant, is so seldom available as scarcely to be reckoned among the exercises beneficial to ladies. Moreover, it is attended with considerable danger in many cases. _To be well_ is to look well. Healthy physical exertion is indispensable to the former state, and in no way can it be so well secured as by riding. Mounted on a well-broken, well-bred horse, and cantering over a breezy down, or trotting on the soft sward, on the way to covert, a lady feels a glow of health and flow of spirits unattainable by any other kind of out or in door recreation. That the foregoing truths are fully appreciated by the ladies of the Upper Ten Thousand is abundantly proved by the goodly gathering of fair and aristocratic equestrians to be seen in Rotten Row during the London season, and at every fashionable meet of hounds in the kingdom in the winter time. Nor is riding confined to those only whose names figure in the pages of "Burke" or "Debrett." Within the last twenty years the wives and daughters of professional men and wealthy tradesmen, who were content formerly to take an airing in a carriage, have taken to riding on horseback. And they are quite right. It is not (with management) a bit more expensive, while it is beyond comparison the most agreeable and salubrious mode of inhaling the breeze. The daughter of the peer, or other great grandee of the country, may be almost said to be a horsewoman to the manner born. Riding comes as naturally to her as it does to her brothers. Both clamber up on their ponies, or are lifted on, almost as soon as they can walk, and consequently "grow" into their riding, and become at fifteen or sixteen years of age as much at home in the saddle as they are on a sofa. In the hunting field they see the best types of riding extant, male and female, and learn to copy their style and mode of handling their horses, while oral instruction of the highest order is always at hand to supplement daily practice. To the great ladies of England, then, all hints on the subject would be superfluous. Most of them justly take great pride in their riding, spare no pains to excel in it, and are thoroughly successful. In fact, it is the one accomplishment in which they as far surpass the women of all other countries in the world as they outvie them in personal beauty. A German or French woman possibly may hold her own with an Englishwoman in a ball room or a box at the opera; but put her on horseback, and take her to the covert side, she is "not in it" with her English rivals. Although the advantages and opportunities I speak of, however, render words of advice upon female equitation unnecessary to ladies of the _sangre azul_, I trust they may be found useful to others who may not have had such opportunities.