MR. RAREY'S TEACHING.
le France they are going through the hard and apparently im- practicable lesson of trying to eat their horses: in England we are learning to make friends of our horses ; and the lesson taught by practical Mr. Rarey appears to be a good deal more successful and profitable than that inculcated by the philosophic Geoffroi St. Hilaire. By degrees Mr. Rarey's system, which has hitherto been told as a secret to six or seven hundred people who paid ten guineas apiece for the exclusive information, is gradually oozing out; and no confidences are broken when some slight hints of his last lecture in London are given to an expectant public. At that meeting the new pupils found the teacher in the riding enclosure of the Roundhouse ; the famous horse Cruiser, " clothed and in his right mind," assisted at the séance. He showed his regenerated condition by a subdued, perhaps saddened, yet mild and contemplative demeanour. The horse who was chosen as the subject of the lecture appears to have been an animal of no pe- culiar vices. The Professor went through his method before his pupils, explaining each part of the process as he executed it ; making no secret, showing that lie relied upon no trick, and avowing for the thousandth time that his discovery rested ex- clusively. upon an observation of the horse, of his disposition, of the motives which work within the recesses of the equine breast. Without drugs, without aids and appliances, without a whip, spur, or threat, meeting the horse as a stranger, Mr. Rarey can reduce him at once to his will, make him follow his new master, lie down, turn over, take the teacher's head between his legs, serve the purpose of a sofa, listen to the beating of a drum not only without fear or anger, but on this occasion with a liveliness as marked as the obedience ; the horse being perfectly docile and positively "frisky." A bonne-bouche was reserved for the conclusion. No horse, however savage, is proved to be beyond the jurisdiction of this new master; but a question had arisen whether the system would hold good with the congener of the horse, the hitherto untame- able zebra. The Zoological Society kindly placed one of these animals at the professor's disposal. Neither blandishments nor biscuits had ever yet subdued this creature to rational demeanour ; and the zebra entered the enclosure with every sign of furious dislike for the whole transaction. Indeed, though not uncon- vinced by Mr. Rarey's peculiar logic, he kept up to the last a savage scream by way of protest, Ldbefore leaving the enclosure bit defiantly at one of the grooms, as if to prove that his temper was still substantially that which he inherited from his ancestors. But he could not wholly withstand the firm gentleness of the horsemaster. .Although with a reluctant cry, he obeyed even as the horses had done ; he followed, he lay down, he turned over in the new equine fashion ; and at last he submitted to be patted by the hand of one of Mr. Rarey's fair pupils. For those who, when he sprung into the enclosure, looked to the strength of the barrier which protected them as their only safety, now approached him without fear or hesitation.
Mr. Rarey calls the principle of his method " my discovery," and justly ; for if some have before stumbled upon its guiding principle, they have not generalized it, constructed an art upon it, or reduced it to a system. If we may now believe the stories Of those " whisperers " who have subdued the horse to their will, they have either arrived at their secret without understanding it, which is most probable, or they treated their secret as empirics, and kept it to themselves. Numbers, from the Arab of the desert to the commonest omnibus-driver, have found that something more than the principle of kindness could master the horse. It is the establishing of complete mental communication with the beast. Thus, amongst the obscurest hackney-carriage-drivers of the metropolis, there is a man who can put a pair of cattle, not re- markable in appearance or condition, to high speed in trotting or galloping, simply by the sound of his feet upon the foot-board ; can evoke signs of sympathy from them, by a kind word ; and can in this way beat the finest horses and the most distinguished drivers, though one of his humble beasts had been literally rescued from the knacker's. This is a kind of competition with the knacker rather more successful than that which M. Geoffroi St. Hilaire and his pupils are now attempting in France, with what stomach they can;
Mr. Rarey's success has of course prompted. a very obvious and natural question. A learned witness before the Select Committee on medical qualifications, early in the century, being asked whether he prescribed for animals, answered, " Yes, I sometimes doctors cows, and sometimes humans." Mr. Rarey has shown the true principle of the government for horses ; he has extended his system to zebras; we know on the authority of the poem, " If I had a donkey," that the system may be extended to asses, and why should it stop short of " humans" ? It is evidently very sound economy. Even as applied to horses alone, it must result in many kinds of saving. There is no doubt that the nervous ex- citement occasioned by the whipping and scourging, now proved to be useless, has occasioned more wear and tear than all that hard work, even of a London omnibus horse, which dooms him to the knacker's in five years. Our humble friend, the Rarey " born to
blush unseen," has proved that the horse's life may be extended beyond the knacker's term. How much of risk and injury, if not of death, has been caused by the viciousness or imperfect manage- ment of the horse ? We have found a way by which the ani- mal can be rendered more valuable, and the premium on life assurance, even for. " sporting gents," reduced. But how vast the economy if the same principle could be extended to the human animal ! There is not a country in the world where the saving would not exceed the power of calcula- tion. The treatment which Cruiser had undergone before the Rarey era completely illustrates what we may call the Austrian principle. The animal was a terror to his rulers ; the administrative groom kept the door of the stable perpetually closed ; or opened it by fits and starts, to introduce food with a " long pole" ; till at last the creature grew wild with bondage, and was wont to reduce any new stall into which he was placed " to lucifer matches" by his frantic behaviour. He was under a repeessive system analogous to that established in Paris ; and he was in a state of constant emeute. All these restraints which harassed the poor animal until he was nearly out of his wits, were pronounced to be " necessary" by the authorities of that day. Mr. Rarey throws open the stable-door, approaches the noble beast with nothing but the words of kindness, and governs him as if the hand of the master were possessed of a spell. There is no secret in the principle. Mr. Rarey has studied the nature of the animal to be governed, and rules him by calling forth the motives of the horse himself. There is no reason why exactly the same method should not be applied to the human biped. Mr. Rarey, by the way, might solve a very difficult problem in his own land by arranging the mode of its application to the negro. We have already mentioned another Rarey, called Walter Crofton, who has had considerable success in applying the system to "the dangerous classes" of this country. Any true friend of Louis Napoleon who does not wish him to be thrown off the saddle and trampled on, would perhaps hint to him that a method so successful with the horse, the ass, and the zebra, might not be altogether impracti- cable with the French nation.
One of the purest saints in the calendar, St. Francis of Assisi, was wont to call the animals he kept and daily fed with his own hand, his " brothers and sisters." This has always been regarded as an ebullition of mere sentiment. But perhaps it pointed to a deeper practical moral insight into questions affecting the dealing of man with man, as well as with beast, thaw has usually been seen in the words.
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