THE CANTER UP. ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY E. CORBET. Hie! hie! hie! and up they go; the old hack bustling away with all his sail set, to get the young one in tune for the thing itself. 66 'Tis expectation only," says the poet, "makes us blest ;" and really we don't know but, after all, the best part of a race is the preparation for it. The gradual business-like air with which the whole ceremony is conducted, from the saddling bell to the starting post, is a fine treat to him who can properly appreciate it. The opportunity one then has of studying man and horse, as they strip for action, far excels the bird's-eye view you catch of the crowd as they shoot by, in all the excitement of the set-to. There you get your notions of what's what confirmed by the colour on your card, or worthy Mr. Justice Clarke's telegraph; while now-but, by Jupiter! there goes the bell for the Twoyear-old Stake; and, if you don't greatly prefer watching that "soger officer" making love to two girls, let's walk down and realize all we were just about to hold forth on. Ay, and here is Mr. Christophero Sly, in the Sidney Herbert livery, looking out for his horse; and there you see, a little further down, is his horse waiting for him. As one example is as good as another, let us witness the meeting between them. "And so say all of us," it seems to be; for, despite stewards, clerks, and course clearers, there is quite a little audience grouped around them already. But the scarlet-capped gentleman is hardened to the gaze of the multitude, if perhaps the brown colt is not; and mark how leisurely and carefully he has the quarter-piece changed for the toy saddle. Young Sir Hercules is a bit " shifty under the operation; but, beyond changing the disposition of the spectators rather suddenly once or twice, there is no harm done. St! gently now, gently! mind yourself, sir!-and so the surcingle is caught and buckled, and the nomination ready for mounting. "What a funny little man!" remarks a by no means little lady, who has just tried the nerves of his horse by opening a pink-and-white parasol bang in his face. "A, neatish-looking colt," says a neatish-looking man, with the air of one well qualified to offer his opinion. "My eyes look at his brown-paper boots," whispers a Johnny Homespun, instituting an involuntary comparison between them and his own patent clod-crushers. "By a leaf," cries the lad in that peculiar patois which is supposed to stand for "By your leave ;" and having been duly "legged up," friend Christopher, adjusting the sit of his waistband as he goes, proceeds to walk his horse before the stand, accordingly as the law directs. After that he canters him up, of course; but there being nothing else ready, and the son of Sir Hercules never having gone without company yet, the trainer or head lad makes the best fight he can of it on the old varmint grey hack, bustling away at him for very life, and making make-believe to be going at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, at least-challenging the other at every stride, or fancying he is doing so, and labouring away most energetically; while the young one is going well within himself, and promising to run over everything in the race. And that old hack, too! Talk of Boswell's Life of Johnson, Nimrod's Life of Mytton, or Smith's Life of Fox!-what would we give for the life and experience of such a hero as this? Now you see him hung up on the rails at the back of the weighing house till somebody wants him for another gallop up, or to rattle into the town for another saddle, or something else that somebody forgot to bring; and to-morrow, as likely as not, coming out on his own account for the Open Handicap, or if it is made up, winning the hearts of young and old, if not the stake itself, by the wonderfully clever style in which he carries a welter weight over the hurdles. After that, the very same evening, most probably he will take the master the first stage home, in the almostequally-well known varmint-looking old gig, and, when once arrived there, lead a long sweat the next morning by way of taking off the stiffness, and go to the post-office afterwards. He has been "is to be sold," as they say of the stud of a gentleman departed this life or this country, for five-and-twenty pounds in hack stakes, almost as many times, if not quite as many, years seasoned; and as for that longstriding, hard-pulling, high-mettled one that is running so indignantly away from him just now, we will pound it, many a season after he has worn out his legs and his fame, old Billy Button will be rattling up spurts, jumping hurdles, drawing gigs, forcing sweats, and looking every bit as seedy and as varmint as usual. Hie! hie! hie there! "And dang 'un!" as Mr. Homespun words it, "he'll give 'un a buster now, if he don't moind!" THE BIOGRAPHY OF BLACK YORK. BY THE AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO," &c., &c. I never knew a sportsman in my life who had not been proprietor of the best dog in the world, setter, greyhound, or pointer; but the ambition of possessing a canine phenomenon is not confined to that order, for the fancy seems universal. A butcher glories in his bull-dog, a ratcatcher swears by his brindled bitch, and the tinker prides himself upon the thing of ribs and skin that follows in his footsteps. Well may he commend him, for to that lean lurcher he has been indebted for many a dinner. He unites to the greyhound's foot the pointer's nose; sneaks quietly to the form where poor puss is taking her siesta, and with one stealthy spring and a squeeze across the back the history of a hare is terminated. Our aunt Deborah-we heard of her loss on the Peninsula, and bore it, thanks to "rum and true religion," like a man-she had a Dutch pug, on whom she exhausted her affections. Between the parties there was no sympathy in shape. My aunt Deborah, anno ætatis sixty-three, was ramrodish in her personalities; she took brown snuff, told long stories of forgotten relatives, had led an irreproachable life, and even from a child entertained an invincible antipathy to matrimony. To induce her to commit the latter she had undergone in her juvenile days sore temptations; but as the period of these trials ran back beyond the recollection of the living, we could not, if we wished, enumerate them particularly. Her dog, Scipio--what a name for a pug!-was extremely corpulent, and an admitted nuisance. Oh, how we delighted to annoy him when we could do so on the sly! Often have we listened to Aunt Deborah when she dwelt upon his sagacity, and expressed strong doubts whether his mental powers were not reasoning. We certainly have seen Scipio remove his foot from a hot cinder without delay; and when we managed, as we did sometimes, to punch him in the ribs or compress his tail in the doorway as he was waddling out after his honoured mistress, loud and angry was the ululation, and may-be we did not catch it in return for our malice prepense, laid down to sheer stupidity. The death of Scipio accelerated the decease of my honoured aunt; for although he was skinned and stuffed, that did not afford her consolation. His demise had been rather sudden; for he dined apparently relishing the roast mutton. A domestic kitchen quarrel revealed the fatal secret that had caused his death, for he had been hurried to an untimely grave by a kick from the under-housemaid. My aunt Deborah, after this distressing disclosure, sent for an attorney to make her will, and also ascertain whether the spider-brusher's offence was not transportable. Billy Davis effected the first object of the mission, and consulted Dick Martin's bill touching the second. Alas! the provisions were defective, the delinquent evaded justice, and Aunt Deborah sickened, went to bed, sent for the priest, made a short shrift, as a virgin life and sundry purifying visits to holy wells and blessed mountains would properly entitle her to, bargained for a hundred masses, paid the amount beforehand, and went to her account like a good catholic and a gentlewoman. The water spaniel is among the most companionable of the dog family, and his natural talents are of the highest order. We had one named Philip, the best of retrievers, whose delight was to get drunk, his favourite beverage being a glass of whiskey and water; and that drunk, his gambols, as he rolled unsteadily over the carpet, were most amusing. He was a gallant animal. We have seen him plough his passage through the young ice after a wounded wild duck when thin as a pane of glass, it was almost as painful to pass through as the glass it might have been mistaken for; but all undaunted he would persevere, until with bleeding breast and scarred limbs he secured the disabled bird. We had a white bull terrier of the largest size, possibly nearer fifty pounds weight than forty-five; and without Philip's intelligence, Bravo was the most determined water-dog we ever met with. Though a thorough-bred bull, he gloried in an element that his class are not generally attached to. Living on the coast, the beach a sandy one, upon which the swells from the Atlantic used to come in forty feet high, under any pretext-a turf that had been cast ashore, or a piece of drift wood, he would, when it was thrown into the boiling surf, dash after it instanter. Framed on the best principles of bull-dog construction, his stout and burly proportions were more favourable to flotation than to speed. Half-smothered he would struggle through "the yeasty waves until in came a billow all intact, that would turn him over altogether. Like the drift wood he had followed he was swept back upon the sand; but when he had barely recovered from semi-suffocation, all undaunted with recent failure, he was ready to renew the attempt. From frequent residences in the pastoral districts of the north, and particularly in the mountain ranges of the Cheviots and the Lammermuir, we have had opportunities of witnessing the astonishing sagacity of the shepherd's dog. Their intelligence is of the highest quality; their attachment to their master unalterable. The utility of the animal to the herdsman renders him only second in consideration to his child, and should accident befall him he is mourned over with unfeigned sorrow; there is a connecting principle of affection between dogs and men, that appears to draw them together insensibly. The Irish peasant, who cannot find potatoes for his family, thinks his cabin lonely without a cur. Ask the owner, "Why do you keep that crook-legged mongrel ?" and the probable answer will be,"Feaks! yer honour, the crature's a wee-bit bandy to be sure; but Lord, he's as wise as a Christian." We used to sometimes call upon an old gentlemen in Galway who patronised a cross-bred pointer. "Mr. H-, where did you get that ugly dog?" Ugly! I'll not undertake to say that he's a regular beauty, but there's not his fellow in the county for all that. Arrah! isn't he the divil for cunning? At this blessed moment he's listening to every word we say; ay, and understands it all too.' Is he of any use; will he catch rats?" "Catch rats! why he'll do anything but cash a bill." It was a pity that Ponto could not have achieved the latter feat, for in Galway it would have been frequently extremely useful. 66 The advent of the royal mail in an Irish country town is always important to the community; the shopkeepers come to their doors with their hands inserted in their trowsers pockets, and out of upper windows pop numerous heads of the loveliest and chastest of the feminine gender upon earth-authoritate Daniel O'Connell-the hair generally in papers, and the dress in the Nora Creina style, and anything but overlaced. I, when not otherwise engaged, was one of the idlers on the inn steps; and one day, while the coach changed horses, the guard removed a basket from the roof, which, to my surprise, he presented me. What the deuce was in it? I expected nothing. I expecting nothing, marvelled what the hamper might contain. I heard a low whimper; I caught the sparkle of a brilliant eye; the lid was opened: within there was a black setter puppy, and from whom it came I never learned. That the gift was considered valuable by the donor, the care with which the basket was fabricated, and the admonitory direction for safe transit written on a slip of parchment, proved. The memory of Black York is fresh in Mayo yet, although ten years have elapsed since he was gathered, at a good old age, to his fathers. He was middle-sized, and in his prime, from the symmetry of his proportions and the raven blackness of his silky coat, fit for a study by a painter. The character of the face was expressive of his temper-gentle and submissive; and we think we see him now resting his head upon our knee, and turning his mild black eyes on ours, to enquire were we inclined to be companionable. A poet describes his hero as no "vulgar boy ;" and wherever he came from, York was of gentle lineage. In youth he was nervous; a loud word alarmed him; and Mr. Malarky, a canine professor of high repute, advised me to get rid of him, for he would never be worth a tra neeine.* Had I entrusted his education to him I have no doubt his opinion would have proved oracular. Mr. Malarky's system for every temper was the same; in his opinion there was nothink like leather, and never were unfortunate tykes cowhided more unmercifully, and under slighter pretexts, than the luckless quadrupeds which the professor undertook to indoctrinate. He is gone to his account, and I believe that in his audit more blinked dogs could have been booked against him than he numbered years, and they were the wrong side of sixty. To the first passage in Black York's career I would turn the attention of young shooters, and impress upon them the necessity of testing a dog's temper well before, like Bob Acres' nether habiliments, they pronounce an "incapability." I know not why, but either from the mystery attendant on the gift, or some secret spring of attachment, I conceived an affection for this nonpareil. I saw him sneak after the brutal dog boy in fear and terror while he was taking out his canine charge to exercise; tried an experiment, and transferred York from the kennel to the drawing-room. I never knew a man of stout heart and kindly disposition who had not canine propensities. In the animal of high or low degree there is generally something that is estimable; and with a person whose heart did not expand to the joyous laugh of childhood, or one who would repudiate the affections of a dog, I would no more consort than I would with a Chartist. The rankest coward, the most mercenary wretch we ever knew, on a short visit, intimated in a round-about way that my parlour favourites, two most gentlemanly Skye terriers, were offensive in his sight. We were too obtuse to comprehend him ; but when he announced his intention of departing, we took care to throw no obstacle in the way. Men of genius have strong animal affinities, and we have seldom known a stout soldier or lovely woman who had not some mute favourite to fall back upon. Scott had his deer-hound, and Kemble his black cat, and Byron his Newfoundland. A school-master is not referrible to the class described, and Mr. Franshaw of Norwich was an excellent example of a dog-hater. "He had," says his biographer, "a great aversion to dogs; he would say that they are noisy, mobbish, and vulgar, and therefore I dislike them." If he entered a room where there was a dog, he requested that he or the dog might be permitted to retire. (We know to whose levanting we would give the precedency.) He had also a dislike to children; he considered them as interrupters of conversation, disturbers of quiet, and frequently offenders against decency and good manners. Now this dirty dog-hater dispensed with shoes and stockings, abhorred cleanliness, would not have his room cleansed on any terms, or his bed made but once a week. His temper was as amiable as Tony Lumpkin's, when nobody contradicted that fine specimen of an English gentleman; but if the pedagogue saw a docked horse, he became sentimental, and roared lustily against the barbarity of tail shortening. One extract of this child and dog hater we must give; and oh, how desirable would be a canine companion, were he the veriest cur on earth, to the beastly fellow who detested it. 66 Franshaw enjoyed uninterrupted good health, but he was of opinion |