THE TURF.
It is singular that no portion of our domestic annals should be so obscure as that which relates to the early history of our first of National Sports. In the remotest ages of civilization (so far at least as any existing records carry us back), a taste for horse-racing was fostered and promoted as a social engine peculiarly adapted to rural and political purposes. The Greeks—the wisest and most polished people that the world has ever seen—carried their estimate of its importance so far, that their chiefs not only took part in the sports of the hippodrome, but acted as officials in the regulation of its details. Philip of Macedon thought it not unbecoming the imperial crown, that he who wore it should discharge the office of judge at the Pythian Games, and his son repaid in gold every line written by Pindar in honour of the chaplet of wild olive.[78] The verse of Pindar, and the prose of Pausanias, have immortalized the names of Olympia and Elis. The latter has left us the minutest particulars of the economy of racing in his day. He describes the Olympian Hippodrome at Elis, and all its gorgeous display of splendid embellishments and ingenious machinery, with a care and prodigality of narrative that give assurance of the importance which attached to the matter delineated. Of the perfection to which, in that era, the science of the course had attained, we need no better proof than the classification observed in the Olympic Games—where horses were matched according to their ages, and prizes instituted for races between mares only (called Calpe). It is needless, however, to encumber our subject with ancient lore, by continuing these classic references. Enough has, perhaps, been already adduced to establish this point—that we possess more knowledge of the condition of racing three thousand years ago, than we do of the state it was in three hundred years since in our native land.
[78] The crown given to the victors in the Olympic games.
But because we are in possession of such scanty materials, it by no means follows that the little we do know should be withheld. The reader will therefore have the courtesy to look back with me to the tenth century, and I promise to bring him again into the nineteenth with all convenient speed. As far back, then, as the reign of Athelstan (925), we read that a present of “running horses” was sent to that monarch from France, the gift of Hugh Capet. As nothing however is known of the character of those animals, we will pass on to the reign of William, which affords better data. At that period a nobleman (the Earl of Shrewsbury) appears to have imported several Spanish horses for his own use. Now, as the Moors had had a footing in Spain for several centuries prior to the Norman conquest, there is little doubt that the blood of the Barb was, in the eleventh century, extensively diffused through that country, and that a highly improved breed of the horse was at the time extant there. Here we have a reasonable era from which to date an amelioration of the indigenous race in our island. A little more than a century later, in the reign of Henry the Second (1154), we come to, as far as I have been able to discover, the earliest mention of racing to be found in our national records. This refers to a barbarous sort of running practised upon the plain now occupied by Smithfield, which does not appear to have been subjected to any regulations of time or method. Smithfield, indeed, was then the great horse-mart, and very probably the contests, exalted by their chronicler (Fitzstephen the monk), to Olympic honours, were nothing more than exhibitions, by rival horse-croupers, of the mettle, speed, and action of their respective “palfreys, hackneys, and charging-steeds.”
Still, that horse-racing was about this time a popular pastime, and one in which the nobles of the land were wont to take pride, is fully established by the allusions to it that abound in the many metrical legends, yet in existence, composed in honour of Richard of the Lion Heart. These preserve the names of the coursers, and speak of them as being valued at sums that, allowing for the difference in the worth of money, quite exceed any prices known in our day. The domestic troubles which marked the reign of John, and the succession of wars in which we were subsequently engaged, probably interrupted the progress of this sport materially—at all events, we do not find any of our sovereigns giving their countenance to it from Richard to the bluff Harry. Henry VIII. was constitutionally disposed for manly occupations and amusements—of his moral tendencies we speak not. We have it on the authority of Challoner that he was much disposed to improve the breed of horses, for which purpose he imported various descriptions from Spain and Turkey. Fortune, too, enabled his daughter Elizabeth to do much for our native breed; the destruction of the Spanish Armada having supplied us with many barbs and Spanish-bred horses, their descendants, found in the vessels of that fleet which fell into the hands of Lord Howard of Effingham.
We now come to her successor, James I.,[79] who must be considered as the founder of legitimate racing in this country. He introduced the first Arab into England of which we have any knowledge—that purchased by Mr. Markham, and known as the Markham Arabian. The training system, which has now reached such perfection, was then practised in its various divisions of physic, work, sweating, and the etcetera of stable economy; and the weight to be carried for public prizes arranged by authority. The Roodee, at Chester, was an established course in this reign, one of the prizes being a silver bell, of the value of ten pounds or thereabouts, run for in five-mile heats. Similar prizes were also given at Theobald’s on Enfield Chase, at Croydon, and Gatherly, in Yorkshire, whence the popular term “bearing the bell,” no doubt, had its origin. His unfortunate son Charles I. had little opportunity of forwarding the social concerns of himself or others. In his reign, however, the first races on record at Newmarket were held, and, by a singular fatality, to Newmarket was he borne a prisoner to the parliamentary forces. The “civil dudgeon” of the Protectorate of course was not friendly to the amusements of the turf, but, though suspended, they were not lost sight of. Mr. Place, the stud-master to Oliver Cromwell, imported the celebrated horse known as the White Turk. He was also the owner of some very capital mares, one of which, during the search after Cromwell’s property at the Restoration, he saved from destruction by hiding in a vault, whence she took the name of the “Coffin Mare.”
[79] The palace at Newmarket was built by this monarch for the purpose of enjoying the diversion of hunting—no races having been held upon the heath till the succeeding reign.
With the Restoration came the palmy days of the Turf. Regular meetings were established at Newmarket, and various other parts of England; silver cups and bowls of the value of one hundred pounds were presented as royal gifts, and, more than all, the light of royal favour shone upon it in shape of Charles the Debonair and Mistress Eleanor Gwynne. William III. had no taste for racing, and died by a fall from his horse. Prince George of Denmark, on the other hand, was warmly attached to the Turf, and promoted its interest by every means in his power. We are indebted for many royal plates to his influence with his consort Queen Anne. George I. was no sportsman; in his reign, however, the alteration in the royal plates took place, by which a sum of one hundred guineas was substituted in their stead. Shortly after George II. ascended the throne, arose a morbid yearning after legislating for the Turf. Some of the acts enacted were mischievous; very many were very silly; one was good:—“That no plate or prize of a less value than £50 should be run for, under a penalty of £200.” It was during this reign that the Darley and Godolphin Arabians were brought into this country,—two horses from whom have descended all the most celebrated racers that adorn the annals of our turf. This is the period at which the genealogy of our unrivalled thorough-bred horse then, was naturalized, and it is the date whence I think it most convenient to begin my notice of English racing.
Even a notice so confined as this is beset with obscurities that few would conceive possible. As an instance, I will adduce the case of an old and well-informed inhabitant of Epsom, who some years ago published a very clever history of that place. He starts somewhere about the Conquest, and never halts for want of materials as he goes on, till he comes to the great stumbling-block, concerning which he shall speak for himself:—“When the races on Epsom Downs were first held periodically, we have not been able to trace; but we find that from the year 1730 they have been annually held in the months of May or June, and about six weeks previous to which the hunters’ stakes are occasionally run for on the Epsom race course, at one of which, in 1730, the famous horse Madcap won the prize, and proved the best plate-horse in England.”
To return, however, to the reign of George II., though we find little bearing on the business of the Turf to be gleaned from its records, it introduces us to the great forefathers of our thorough blood, and stirs one of the most interesting questions in our domestic natural history—the problem of the seed or origin of the English thorough-bred horse. A brief search through the stud-book will convince the inquirer that, almost without exception, our great racers were and are descendants of the Darley and Godolphin Arabians: I use the latter term merely because its conventionality now identifies those celebrated animals. They were both, as has been stated, imported in this reign: the question that I would here investigate applies equally to each, but, for the sake of simplifying it, I will treat it with reference to the latter only. “That he was a genuine Arabian,” says the stud-book, “his excellence as a sire is deemed sufficient proof;” a little further on we read, “It is remarkable that there is not a superior horse now on the Turf without a cross of the Godolphin Arabian, neither has there been for several years past.” The probable date of his arrival in this country was 1725, or thereabouts. Hundreds of Arabs had preceded him as sires, their introduction for that purpose having been a very general speculation from the time of Charles I. That the indigenous island breed had thereby been rendered good service, there can be no doubt; but that the Turf derived any signal advantages from the importations is more than problematical.
Are our celebrated strains of racing blood derived at all from an Arab source, and, if so descended, are they excellent consequently, or of accident? As regards the first moiety of the inquiry, a work has just appeared in Paris, the production of a gentleman of some literary celebrity[80], relating to the genealogy of the horse so long known to us as the Godolphin Arabian. His statements go to show that he was a pure Barb, presented, with seven others, by the Bey of Tunis to Louis XV., about the year 1731. All the portraits I have ever seen of him certainly go to strengthen this reading of his descent, and proclaim him not of Asiatic origin. The date is an erroneous one, as he was a sire in England in the year in which he is said to have reached France; but we must be content with very vague data in all that concerns our subject a century ago. As to the second division of the question, after-time must furnish the means of replying to it, if it be ever answered. My bias is to a belief that there exist families of the horse in the East possessed of a perfection infinitely surpassing any generically inherited. This I have attempted to demonstrate in a work upon which I am at present engaged, some portion of which has been already published.[81] The fact (of which I was made conscious by authority beyond question) that the Imaum of Muscat, one of the most powerful sovereign princes of India, expended ten years of active search, backed by the enormous bribe of ten thousand pounds, before he could procure a descendant of a line sufficiently pure to present to King George IV., seems to establish the truth of the theory to which I profess being inclined. All that we learn from our knowledge of the almost religious veneration with which the genealogy of the horse is treated in the East, goes to the like confirmation. “It is remarkable that there is not a superior horse now on the turf without a cross of the Godolphin Arabian,” I leave the reader to interpret as his own reflections may lead him.
[80] M. Eugene Sue.
[81] Annals of the British Turf, from the Introduction of Eastern blood to the present Time. The first century concluded in the Old Sporting Magazine.
Shall I venture, at the hazard of pursuing my theory “ultra fines,” to offer one more example in support of it? That no structural organization available to the eye, no individual excellence in the parents, influence, in our raising stock, the performances of their offspring, are truisms taught by every stud in the kingdom. All that exist among us, descended from the great forefather of the Turf, are capable of producing offspring of equal pretension, as regards the root from which they are sprung. Far different was the result in relation to the importations of Eastern blood contemporary with the Godolphin, and the same it has been with all more recently introduced. Enough, at all events, has been adduced, if not to prove my position, to warrant me, at least, in its assumption, as well as for offering it to the consideration of those who hold the subject to which it relates of sufficient interest to engage their attention.
From such speculations on the origin of the British racehorse, we will turn to the annals of his exploits,—a theme more generally attractive, though intrinsically less important. Here, to begin with the early worthies of the turf, all is as obscure as is the genealogical problem with which we have been already engaged. Of the performances of Childers, detailed, as they are, with all apparent microscopic observations of the seconds’ hand, I am convinced that we know rather worse than nothing. In a recent work of more than an ordinary character on the subject to which it addresses itself (Lawrence’s History of the Horse), Childers—Flying Childers, as he was designated par excellence—is stated to have been a chestnut, whereas he was a rich bay with four white legs. The same slovenly style, no doubt, attaches to the records of the early performances, as well as to the more recent attempts of equestrian historians. Again, the only criterion by which we can estimate them is, when we can refer to a timed race, because, knowing little of the principals, we cannot be supposed to have a better knowledge of the pretensions of their contemporaries. Now, even in our day, when all the appliances for chronometrical accuracy are so vastly improved and multiplied, we rarely hear of the time of a race being kept at all, even accidentally: it is never done by authority, or on a principle deserving of confidence.
We know that the taste, in the middle of the last century, inclined to long distances, and repeated exertion—six and eight-mile heats being events of constant recurrence; and yet we are required to believe that there existed at and previous to that time a flight of speed unknown to our degenerate days. Moreover, by far the greater portion of the early racers were undersized, Galloways as the old Calendars have them in every page; and stride is, save in rare exceptions, indispensable to a high degree of swiftness. In the absence of any actual data as to speed, worthy being confided in, it may not be inconvenient to relate a performance of one of the first-class horses of that period; and, by contrasting it with a match against time, done by a contemporary hackney, some deduction may be drawn of the qualities of the racers of that era.
Gimcrack, a grey horse bred in 1760, by Cripple out of Miss Elliot, was considered one of the best of his day. In consequence of his superiority, he was sent to France, where he was matched for a large sum to do a certain distance against time. Whatever it was, he was the winner, having accomplished twenty-three miles in fifty-five minutes. This was probably in 1770. In 1778, a foundered hackney, aged twenty-two, belonging to a Mr. Hanks, did twenty-two miles within the hour, upon the high road in the neighbourhood of London. Gimcrack carried eight stone: the weight on the hackney is not given, but there is no reason for believing it less than eight stone; so that one of the best race-horses of that day could only beat a broken-down hack a mile and five minutes in an hour!
It is a conventional fallacy to attribute to past days virtues superior to those in which were live. Every thing, from the seasons to the flavour of home-brewed, was better, if we credit the popular voice, “in the good old times.” To examine the application of this rule to the matter before us, I may perhaps be permitted to borrow a leaf out of my own book, seeing that I could scarce make my argument stronger in any other form of words.
“After a careful examination of all the best authorities bearing upon the condition of the Turf in that so emphatically called its palmiest era—the middle of the last century—I find nothing to warrant the belief that, as a species, the contemporaries of King Herod, Imperator, Eclipse, Florizel, and Highflyer, possessed either speed, power, or symmetry, unknown to the racer of our day. At the very date to which this extraordinary excellence is ascribed, we find the degeneracy of that particular breed the subject of legislative consideration; and in 1740 that an Act of Parliament was passed, denouncing the Turf as the cause of the growing debasement of the breed of horses all over the kingdom, and fixing the weights to be carried in all plates and matches at ten stone for five-year-olds, eleven stone for six, and twelve stone for seven-year-olds and upwards, on pain of a penalty of £200, and forfeiture of the horse. It is true that this Act was repealed soon afterwards, through the intervention, as it was believed, of the Duke of Cumberland; nevertheless it is manifest that there must have existed strong grounds for complaint against the system of breeding and racing before the consideration of its economy would be made a subject of Parliamentary interference. Let us turn to the weights carried by two-year-olds fifty years ago, and those common to the present period,—the former averaging from six stone to six stone six pounds, the latter from eight stone five pounds to eight stone seven pounds, and what evidence of degeneracy does that furnish?” Racing, wherever we meet it existing as a popular sport, is the growth of a root indigenous to England. All the appliances of civilization are carried to a higher degree of perfection among us, in the present day, than at any former period of our history: the Turf, and all its materiel, it cannot be doubted, has attained a comparative condition of excellence.
In a nation peculiarly attached to rural sports, that, as matter of course, becomes entitled to the place of honour which diffuses the greatest portion of enjoyment to the greatest number of people. In this view, racing is well entitled to the pre-eminence which it has so long claimed, and had conceded to it; but it prefers demands of a higher nature than its mere pleasurable results. In a political sense, it is an engine of no mean importance. A state must benefit largely from an agency which exhibits its nobles promoting, at great individual cost, a sport in which all classes can participate equally with themselves, and which brings together all the divisions of society for one end and purpose—social recreation. Where shall we seek the great moral of England’s power and station?—In the wealth which commerce pours upon her shares?—In her wooden walls?—In the skill, learning, and valour of her sons? We can scarce study it in a more impressive page than that yearly spread before us at the great popular re-unions of Epsom, Ascot, and Doncaster. Let such as love such lore, then, search after it where the examination will surely reward their industry: we will take it up, abstractedly, as a pastime, and in that character look into the nature and influence of its present economy.
As a treasury of art, an assembly of learning, ingenuity, and pleasure, our metropolis has many rivals—some superiors: in our rural life we stand alone. Mainly this has been brought about by—is the consequence of—a general taste for field sports. Whether the cause of morality is served by horse-racing, it is not our province to inquire. An inelegant but most apropos salt-water axiom says, “every man to his post, and the cook to the fore-sheet.” Mankind, since the creation, has set its face against all work and no play, and will do so to the end of the chapter. We are of the disciples of Democritus; and, feeling in the vein, will just touch in here, merely in outline, a faint sketch of a Derby Day.
Perhaps, with one exception alone, none of the realities of life come up to the anticipations of them; and what, you ask, is that singular deviation from the general rule?—It is a Derby Day. Imagine a conglomeration of two millions of souls stirred to its penetralia, shaken from its propriety, morally earthquaked, because of the necessity which annually requires that a certain portion of the mass (say a fortieth) should rendezvous in a neighbourhood where certain horses are to contend some two minutes and sundry seconds for certain monies, and you arrive at a general idea of something by no means in the ordinary course. The scene of this commotion is London, the majority of the actors automata that make yearly one solitary diversion (in both the word’s interpretations) from the regular cycles of their orbits. But such a Saturnalia demands a word anent its note of preparation.
As soon as the month dawns, big with the catastrophe of Epsom Races, straightway from Belgrave Square to Shoreditch, from the Regent’s Park to uttermost Rotherhithe, forth the sackage goes that guts, from garret to cellar, every Pantechnicon, Bazaar, and Repository of all and singular the wheeled conveniences and inconveniences peculiar to each. Anon the horse, in all its infinite gradations, is had in requisition, from Newman’s choicest specimens of blood, that devour the Surrey highways, to the living quadrupedal skeleton redeemed from the knacker’s knife at the last Smithfield show for fifteen shillings, and a “drop o’ summut for luck.” The day arrives, and lo! a mighty chain of carriages, “in linked grumbling long drawn out,” extends from the Elephant and Castle to the merry Downs of Epsom, whitherwards we will suppose thy anxious way hath at length been achieved. The moisture of travel encumbereth thy brow: searchest thou for thy best Bandana to relieve thee of the damp? Luckless wight!—
“——That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian from thy pocket prig.”
Is not the tide of humanity at the flood of spring? Ten deep do vehicles of all kinds, definite and undefinable, line the course. Opposite and around the stand all is high-bred and aristocratic: lower down, leading for Tattenham’s classic corner, you haply take your curious path. What lots of pretty girls you encounter as you go!—each so lady-like and bien mise, you would never dream of their metropolitan whereabouts, were it not for those awful mortalities that cluster around them; brothers, cousins, lovers it may be—pale shadows that haunt the glimpses of Bow Church—horrible illusions from Ludgate Hill and the Ward of Cheap, with prickly frills to their linen, swallow tails to their coats, green velvet waistcoats, or, still more shocking, similar habiliments of black satin, whereon the indecent chain of Mosaic grins ghastly, like the gilding on a coffin!—faugh!
Drawing near to the lines, hark! from glass coach, britscha, jarvey, phaeton, proceed various sounds of discontent.—“Cold chickens, veal pie, lobsters and no salt.”—“Half-a-dozen bottles is all very fine, and never no corkscrew.”—“Sir, I’ll set that right if you’ll only accommodate us with the loan of a glass; really it’s too provoking.”... Ascend the hill, approach the Ring, and hear what sums are jeopardied on the coming event!—enough to purchase half-a-score of German principalities; but the warren is open, and thither you are borne by the countless thousands who throng for a glance of the coursers on whom hang the hopes and fears of all.
No spot can be better adapted for the purpose to which it is assigned than the so well-known warren; but all that nature has done man takes especial care to frustrate. Instead of its cool quiet alleys being kept for the tranquil preparation of animals peculiarly disposed to excitement (their most dangerous foe at a moment when the entire possession of every faculty is of such vital consequence), every “dingle, nook, and bosky bourn” is invaded by a horde of ravenous, sight-seeing cockneys, of all beasts of prey the most reckless and perverse. Amid this restless crowd of babbling, cigar-smoking untameables, the process of saddling is effected, and, with graceful steps, the fiery-footed adversaries depart for the lists.
You reach the place of starting, and what awaits you there? Order, decorum, and all fitting arrangement for the important essay of which it is the arena? A second chaos!—all the human elements thrown together in a moral whirlpool. A score of men in buckram suits (blue linsey-wolsey), attempting to dispose of twice as many thousands—something like barring the gates of a beleagured town with boiled carrots! They draw together for the start—infinitely the most influential point in the great game to be played. Here all is confusion worse confounded: the multitude opens its thousand throats of brass; the steeds are frantic; the jockeys (born and bred devils from their cradle) practise every conceivable stratagem ever hatched in Fiendom; and there stands one nervous old man to front the pitiless pelting, and produce from such materials a result with which all are to be satisfied. “They are off!” and the old gentleman, in his agony, pronounces “go,” and the fatal signal has gone forth. Over the hill, adown the fall, there is a meteoric flash, as though a rainbow had borrowed the wings of the lightning, and all is over!
The Derby is decided—the steeds turned round—the jockeys approach the scales—Holy Mother of Moses! has it entered the heart of man (even an Irishman) to conceive the tearing and swearing, the howling and screeching, that instant rends the empyrean! Quick as thought a circle of bludgeons and constables is formed, into which the horses as they arrive are received, and against which a roaring ocean of humanity is dashing as fiercely as the vexed Atlantic. Look towards the grand stand—behold whole acres of countenances uplifted to the sky, wedged as closely as a crate of French eggs, and resembling nothing as yet discovered but a monstrous dish of opened oysters! The round earth is shaken, and echo gives up the ghost—the thunder hides its diminished head, as with the bellowings of ten thousand volcanos myriads of furious lungs crash forth, “Who has won?” Thus whilom did I sing of this scene; and with better experience, save in the episodes of flying voltigeurs, men “with never no back-bones at all, only a slip of gristle to hold head and heels together,” and epicures in cutlery, “who swallow knives and forks for all the world like gingerbread nuts,” I can add nothing to the beau ideal of a Derby Day.
How little can they, who first give existence to a principle, foresee how it will operate, and what may be its results. The pastime of horse-racing, fostered and promoted simply as a channel of amusement by the gay and thoughtless Charles, called into being the strongest impulse of man’s nature—emulation, and thus entailed upon this country a race of the noblest of all existing animals, of a character apparently superior to that originally destined by nature. This may be an erroneous theory, but as yet we are unacquainted with any variety of the horse comparable to the artificial stock known as our thorough-blood. The very general efforts that were made from that period by the nobles and great landed proprietors to improve by lavish outlay, and all the appliances which it can command, the best strains of the recently imported Oriental blood, towards the middle of the last century, seem to have carried the race-horse as a species as near to perfection as his generic organization will admit. True, every year produced some few infinitely superior to their contemporaries, but they were phenomena,—indebted to no individuality of parentage for their excellence, and unpossessed of the faculty of endowing their descendants with similar gifts. As a race, when opposed to the indigenous horse of any quarter of the earth, the English thorough-blood is universally victorious; among the various families into which it is divided at home, no constant succession of superiority has ever discovered itself.
I am aware that those who only take a superficial view of the economy of our racing system will at once pronounce against this position. They will adduce the sons and daughters of King Herod, Eclipse, and Highflyer; in our day, of Sultan and Emilius, as far surpassing the ordinary run of their contemporaries. But they do not bear in mind that not only did and does the progeny of these justly celebrated sires greatly outnumber that of their less favoured brothers, but that the best mares of their respective eras were and are exclusively put to them. Not to travel beyond our own day for proofs, did excellence ensure its like, what chance would have remained to those who now and then breed a solitary nomination against the gigantic studs of Hampton Court, Riddlesworth, or Underly? To confine the question to the present year (1838), we had evidence that not all the wealth, skilful training, Sybarite care and treatment of the best of England’s blood could produce a match for the son of one of our indifferent racers,—the despised of an Irish tenth-rate stable,—the wonderful and the basely-abused Harkaway.[82] I may be told that he was defeated here, and by second-raters, too,—but under what circumstances? With ordinary care, without having been subjected to actual ill-treatment, at weight for age there was nothing of the year in England that could have stood any chance with him.
[82] This extraordinary animal is now (December 1838) advertised for sale, his price six thousand guineas, with this strange addition, “that his owner (Mr. Ferguson) rides him hunting once or twice a week!”
From these premises the deduction at which we arrive bearing upon the economy of the turf, its nature and influence is twofold, and admits of a very brief solution,—the first being that the day is long passed since the means of winning upon the race-course were to be obtained by breeding; the second, that the vast advantages still to be derived from a proper application of our thorough-blood is most strangely neglected. Mr. Bowes began his racing career by breeding a winner of the Derby, while the late Duke of Leeds, the most extensive breeder of blood stock in the north, toiled in vain for the Leger till he won it with a colt bought from the tail of the plough. Lord George Bentinck, the best winner on the turf of modern days, if the Calendar be any criterion, regards breeding racers as an expedient no man in his senses should dream of, and, acting upon his theory, has put money in his purse. A first-class racer, a colt of extraordinary promise, are each productions of chance-medley, only to be come at by being secured where and when they can be found.
But if the Turf be thus restricted in further profiting, save as matter of hazard, by the means which securely ministered to the success of its first speculators, it furnishes materials from which may be moulded other distinct races, as valuable, each in its province, as the flying family of the modern race-course, now the sole representatives of our thorough-blood. The ragged regiment of cock-tails will, it is devoutly to be hoped, speedily be disbanded; the day soon arrive when no gentleman shall be seen bestriding the mongrel of a base-bred hackney, scarce worthy the shafts of a costermonger’s trap. And first, as is befitting, such reform must commence with its next of kin—The Field. Shall this, assuredly the second—nay, the twin-sport of racing, in the esteem of Englishmen, long continue dependent upon chance for a supply of horses for its service? Impossible; the period cannot be far distant in which the British thorough-bred hunter will be as distinct a race, and of as high renown, as his progenitors were the pride of the Turf.
