The duke seems to have been somewhat profuse in the use of words, and not very happy in his use of them, but after all we know just what he means. The description of the movement is that of the clean-cut pace, and our object in introducing it here is not only to show that the pace was then a well-known and natural gait in England, but also to show that the _pace_ and the _amble_ are one. In itself, the word “amble” is a better word than “pace,” for the latter is often used in referring to a rate of speed without regard to the particular gait taken by the horse, but in this country it is now universally understood to apply to the lateral motion, and it would not be wise at this day to attempt to change it. There is an undefined supposition in the mind of some people that the amble is something different from the pace, that it is a slower and less pronounced gait, and hence we are often told a given horse did not pace, but “he ambled off.” In all that we have found in the writings of the past, and in all that I have seen with my own eyes, I have not been able to discover that there is any distinction between the amble and the pace. The only distinction is not in the gait itself, but in the fact that our ancestors, four hundred years ago, used the word “amble” to express precisely the same thing that their descendants now express by the word “pace.” The only sense in which the word “amble” is used among the horsemen of this country is to describe a kind of slow, incipient pace that many horses, both runners and trotters, show when recalled for a fresh start in scoring for a race. This probably indicates, whether in the case of a runner or a trotter, that somewhere, not very far removed, there is a pacing inheritance, and this incipient amble, as it is sometimes called, comes from that inheritance. It is also possible that it may arise from the excitement of the start and the confusion consequent upon the contest.