The reason is that the military trot is taught upon the principle of balance. The man sits fair down on his seat, and, keeping his knee forward and his heel well down, does not cling to the horse by muscular grasp; consequently the bumping, so terrific to the eye of the civilian, is scarcely felt by the soldier, and in continental armies, where rough trotting horses are exceptional, the motion or jolt is scarcely perceptible. There are a great many popular fallacies about military riding--as, for instance, that a dragoon rides with a very long stirrup; that his seat is insecure; that the bumping gives a horse a sore back; and that, except a sailor and a tailor, a dragoon officer is about the worst horseman to be found. This is not exactly the place to enter into any controversy on the subject; but I may as well observe at once, and I do so because I am sure the old soldiers are not altogether despised by the ladies, even in this non-military country, that all the foregoing are so many mistakes. A dragoon, any time within my memory, rode just the same length as a man does over a country--that is to say that, measuring the cavalry man's leather and iron by the length of his arm and hand, which is the right length for a civilian, you have exactly the cavalry regulation length. The stirrup of a lancer indeed is somewhat shorter than that used by most hunting men. Finally, an acquaintance with the _habitués_ of such places as Melton would prove to unbelievers in the riding of cavalry officers that the names of most of the men who go to the front in the hunting-field, and keep there, are to be found in the "Army List." I have been tempted thus to digress by having referred to the military riding school, from which in former days, most, if not all, the riding masters who taught ladies came. Now, although I stand up (as in duty bound) for the military system of riding _per se_, it does not produce the right man to teach a woman to ride, if the experience of the preceptor has been acquired in the riding school only. Excellent as is our system (or, rather, the German system, for it is imported from the Prussian service), for making a man a first-class dragoon, as regards anything connected with a lady's seat or the principle of her balance, it is useless. As regards her hands, or the application of the "aids" of the _manége_, it is highly beneficial, because nothing can be more clear or concise than the simple rules laid down in military equitation for the application of the "helps," by which a horse's easy movement is controlled and regulated. It was principally to the want of men who could teach a lady to ride, however, that the absence of a trotting in the side saddle was to be attributed "lang syne."