Accoutrements for the Horse
Every accoutrement for the horse, however ornamental and pictorial, beyond the mere saddle and bridle, is to be rejected, as being in bad taste. The crupper and breast-band are now almost obsolete; the saddle-cloth has nearly disappeared; nettings are, generally speaking, abandoned; and the martingale itself, valuable as it may be for horses of a certain character, is rarely to be seen. Simplicity, indeed, as regards female equestrianism, is now imperatively (and, strange to say, most judiciously) enjoined, by “that same fickle goddess, Fashion,” in obedience to whose sovereign behest, a lady’s horse, in the olden time, was disguised, as it were, “in cloth of gold most curiously wrought.”