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ARTICLE VI.

SKETCH OF THE POWERS AND FEATS OF DUCROW THE
EQUESTRIAN; ILLUSTRATED BY A CAST OF HIS HEAD
IN THE COLLECTION OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL SO-
CIETY.

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A TROOP of equestrians from London, who lately exhibited for some months in Edinburgh, attained very general popu. larity and celebrity ; notwithstanding that equestrian feats had for many years ceased to be a novelty in the place. Their theatre overflowed every night; the other dramatic resorts were comparatively deserted; and, by the time of the company's departure, there were few of the entire population who had not been the delighted and really astonished witnesses of the wonders they performed. The riders were all expert in their break-neck vocation ; but, with one excep

l; tion, had been excelled by the Parkers and Rickets of thirty years ago. The exception was the manager, Ducrow; of whom

in a word be said, that he as much outdid the feats of the most skilful professors of the art, as they could outdo what could have been achieved by the nimblest of their spectators. Having filled a box with happy children,-not the least interesting part of such spectacles,--we felt in such company quite at ease about our gravity, and resolved minutely to note what we saw, and trace it to its origin,the performer's brain.

After a trial of skill by the rest of the troop, “ Monseigneur venit,"—in the person of Mr Ducrow. He sprang upon his beautiful horse as if the movement had been a step in a quadrille, and, putting him to his full speed, stood upon

the saddle with as much ease and confidence as he could have stood on the ground. In the expression of the other riders there was the anxiety of Cautiousness as their horse galloped round; but the remark was general that Ducrow seemed to forget his perilous situation, and to be, moreover, unconscious

that every change of his position was marked, in a manner peculiar to himself, with ease and grace, and that every attitude was unconstrained, natural, and elegant. The circular, and it may be observed, moderately-sized arena, like the skater's out-edge circle on the ice, it is well known, gives to the equestrian who stands on horseback the benefit of the law of rotatory motion, like a hoop whirling round a full glass of wine. The horse is forced into a sloping position, to which the rider must conform; and his inclination inwards increases not only his gracefulness, but his safety. But Ducrow scorns the ordinary limits of rotatory aid; and, in the face of all accustomed phenomena of gravitation, flies round, standing at such an angle, even to his sloping horse, as no human being but himself could have changed to any thing but a descent to the sand. Often he seemed to stand on the side of his horse; but he recovered a safer position just as easily as he threw himself into the inexplicable one now described; and in every part of the feat he was as graceful and easy as in his simpler performances. The ordinary exploits of skipping-ropes, garters, and hoops, were the mere casual odds and ends of his exhibition, and seemed to give him no more concern than the riding round; he had a much higher, and certainly in his vocation a most unheard-of field of performance. Flying round at full speed, he began to act a dramatic scene pantomimically. His dress was that of a sailor, and a small bundle on a staff over his shoulder was meant to express his return to his home. None of the incongruities of a sailor's equitation, even with the assured equilibrium of a seat on the saddle, aided by the usual safeguards of a leg on each side of the horse, and feet established in the stirrup as fast as a vagrant's in the stocks,-nay not even the outrage on nature of a sailor standing on the back of a horse at a gallop, for a moment occurred to the spectator who saw the gallant tar swinging round as naturally and as securely as if he had been reefing a top-sail. We soon forgot that he was

on horseback at all, so powerfully did his scenic talent engross us with other feelings. The animated look and the speed of his progress to that concentration of human delights, Home, were finely and most naturally acted; while the grace and ease of the winged Mercury was realized to our view. His heart was full of the details of his happiness. In an instant his bundle was unpacked, and a girl's little frock was displayed and folded to his bosom ; it was replaced, and a boy's dress was hung out with the same natural language of a father's affectionate anticipation of soon embracing the future wearer. The horse at speed was now completely forgotten by the spectator, and, to all appearance, by. the actor himself, who seemed engrossed with other business than maintaining his balance in his critical position. The thing was so exquisitely done, that many of us were positively, ashamed of being beguiled of a tear by so powerful an appeal to human sympathies, coming from so extraordinary a stage. But he has yet another claim on the spectator's feelings. His darling boy and girl have a mother, and he has a beloved wife; and forth from his bosom comes her miniature ! Nothing could exceed the grace and passion of this enraptured movement, as, mid thunders of applause, he flew round the circle, holding it out eagerly, but gracefully, as if he said, “ Look how beautiful she is !" then kissing it and holding it out again,-himself anon surveying its beauties at different distances from his eye, as if he criticised it in the composure of an arm-chair; and with his other hand-for he has always both hands at his commandpointing out all its beauties. A purse of gold he then joyously displays, and avoids all the coarseness of that exhibition, by a graceful and kindly movement which refers the treasure to the emblems of those other treasures, which give it its chief value. It was really ridiculous not to be able to keep unmoved by the entire spectacle of a man standing upon a galloping horse, holding up in one hand two baby-dresses and a miniature picture, and in the other

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chinking a purse of gold. The purse and picture are restored to his breast, the dresses are packed up, the horse continues at undiminished speed, and the sailor proceeds to tell, still in pantomime, his history; all his . perils by flood and fight, bis battles and his shipwrecks, during which he fights his gun, hauls the ropes, rows a boat, is cast into the stormy sea, saves himself by swimming, performing the motion with inflated cheeks; and all with a truth, and force, and pathos, which no actor on solid boards, who had nothing else to do but to think of the truth to the nature of his delineations, could have exceeded.

The parts thus played by this singular man were numerous, and all equally successfully. Nothing baffled him. He could undress and re-attire as he stood on his horse at speed; with many other feats equally unaccordant with his perilous position. But his masterpiece of equestrian prowess, in which he never had, and we may safely calculate, never will have a rival, is managing six horses at speed at the same time; changing their arrangement with all the regularity of a cavalry-movement, or a cotillon, while he bestrides several at once ; standing now. upon one, now upon another; sometimes one foot on the shoulder of one, and the other on the croup of another; sometimes lying down among them with his hands folded, to sleep; then rousing himself, and, remembering his commission as a courier, sorting his letters, and replacing them in his mail-bag; while there is not a false movement, even a slip, or for one instant the appearance of difficulty, or disturbance of a demeanour of the most perfect ease and elegance. These two last qualities seemed quite inseparable from his every movement. His contest with Bucephalus was graceful; so was his bearing as, monarch-like, he witnessed the games of prowess by his soldiers, and descended from his pedestal to crown the victor

* He has since performed in London seven characters without leaving the saddle.

with a wreath; while his exhibition of the attitudes of a number of the finest statues evinced how vividly images of beauty, in form and posture, are perceived and how naturally they are realized by him.

Now, as it is phrenologically undeniable, that there was not one jot of all that Ducrow thus performed, whether it ⚫was movements or attitudes, or balance of body, or expression of feelings, which did not spring from his brain; in other words, that no form of trunk and limbs, no endowment of muscles, no proportion of body, no elasticity of tendons or ligatures, would of themselves be sufficient, unguided by cerebral influence, the question is of great interest to the Phrenologist,-What must that brain be which could achieve it all with the most perfect facility?

First, Let us consider Ducrow's easy and never-failing maintenance of his balance in the critical position of standing on the back of a horse at full speed. The facts and reasonings in the two papers in the Phrenological Journal, vol. II. p. 412, and IV. p. 266, go far to explain this rarely-possessed power. In the last-quoted paper, it is shown that there is a system of nerves which convey a feeling of the state of the muscles, as affected by external forces, to the brain; which instantly responds by sending the necessary nervous influence, by the medium of the nerves of motion, to the muscles, to enable them to restore their equilibrium. The more nice the perception of a changed state of the muscle, the more immediately will its equilibrium be restored; and it is only supposing this sensation very exquisite, and the motor-nerve very obedient, to conceive equilibrium not only recovered, when endangered by the most trying variations of gravitation, but so steadily preserved as never to be lost, or even appear to be lost. It requires one degree of the sensation of equilibrium, and the respondence of muscular contraction, for the human body to stand on the ground. It is an increased degree of the quality to preserve the balance of the body standing on a moving support, as on a cart in

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