of no king, but content with the irregular government of nobles, under
whose leading they force their way through all obstacles." A race--like
those Cossacks who are probably their lineal descendants--to be feared,
to be hired, to be petted, but not to be conquered.

Instances nearer home of free equestrian races we have in our own English
borderers, among whom (as Mr. Froude says) the farmers and their farm-
servants had but to snatch their arms and spring into their saddles and
they became at once the Northern Horse, famed as the finest light cavalry
in the world. And equal to them--superior even, if we recollect that
they preserved their country's freedom for centuries against the superior
force of England--were those troops of Scots who, century after century,
swept across the border on their little garrons, their bag of oatmeal
hanging by the saddle, with the iron griddle whereon to bake it; careless
of weather and of danger; men too swift to be exterminated, too
independent to be enslaved.

But if horsemanship had, in these cases, a levelling tendency it would
have the very opposite when a riding tribe conquered a non-riding one.
The conquerors would, as much as possible, keep the art and mystery of
horsemanship hereditary among themselves, and become a Ritterschaft or
chivalrous caste. And they would be able to do so: because the conquered
race would not care or dare to learn the new and dangerous art. There
are persons, even in England, who can never learn to ride. There are
whole populations in Europe, even now, when races have become almost
indistinguishably mixed, who seem unable to learn. And this must have
been still more the case when the races were more strongly separated in
blood and habits. So the Teutonic chief, with his gesitha, comites, or
select band of knights, who had received from him, as Tacitus has it, the
war-horse and the lance, established himself as the natural ruler--and