Chester Cup, a gentleman well known in the betting circles, and possessed of talents for legislation generally." Down goes the rail, up goes the "ring." Demosthenes, why didst thou die? Cicero! why canst thou not hear the oratory of the modern Olympian school?.... Extract from the Parliamentary Debates, April the first, 1852:-"The present state of the continent," observed the right honourable gentleman, the member for Six-mile Bottom, "appears to me so far from the promise of a satisfactory settling, that I'll lay fifty ponies to one no one names the new president of the Russian Republic, and take long odds that Smith O'Brien is Emperor of France."

"Hanage seria ducent.".....The past month was blank as regards practical field sports, but bracing exercises abounded. Such a season's skating has not been known in these islands within the last quarter of a century. The thick-ribbed ice everywhere spread an arena for robust and wholesome pastime. "Stat glacies iners," wrote Horace to one of his friends; had he seen the use we make of a hearty frost he would have used a very different epithet. While all the world are gliding about like swallows in the serene of a summer evening, with the reader's leave we will look beyond the thaw, even into the theories of coming events. The Sheet Calendar of the 16th ult. was big with the promise of the future. One hundred and eighty-seven horses are handicapped for the Chester Cup, from Chanticleer, 9st. 6lbs., to some five or six at 4st. The nominations were 189. There's a California for bettors round! They'll all be backed-every cripple of them. The more books the more backers-only bait with a bet and you are secure of a bite.

Everybody is doing or being done in the speculative line-in foreign loans or domestic lotteries. The waiters of the Clubs are bankers in odds, and the porters keep their betting secretaries. The newspapers, a few days ago, had a report of a trial in the Bail Court. One of the witnesses deposed as follows: "My name is Charles Sanders: I know the defendant: he is waiter or porter at the Union Club: he is in the habit of betting: I am his secretary: the defendant is still porter at the Union, and I still manage his betting business: he keeps a betting list: I am not secretary to any one else." There's nothing in "High Life below Stairs" up to this average: the pranks of the flunkies in the farce were flights of fancy in anticipation of the partycoloured gentry of our days.

Almost all the handicaps have filled full, but their popularity is jeopardized by the chicken sweepstakes fast coming into fashion. Produce Stakes of 10 sovs. each, half forfeit, are very killing flies for the fishers of men. They are, however, artificial flies; there is the seeming of a grace about them-they "assume a virtue if they have it not." But many of the handicaps are avowedly got up for the abstract purpose of gambling; these are your maggots wherewith your leg angles for his " fools' gudgeons." As it would be invidious to particularize, the reader is requested to apply cases to the best of his judgment. The two last sheet Calendars will supply him with very pretty picking. All the stakes advertised for Warwick and Leamington Spring Races are for 10 sovs.; the same, with a solitary exception, is the case at Malton. The subscriptions to the Manches

ter Produce Stakes, 10 sovs. each, to run at three years old (1853), number 57, and those to the renewal of the Great Lancashire Produce Sweepstakes, also 10 sovs. each, to run at two years old at the Liverpool July Meeting, 1852, to 50. It must be said in praise of these chicken hazards that they put stables in the way of cheap trials, and those of the only satisfactory sort. I remember a few years ago walking from Doncaster to the course on the Leger day with the owner of a colt which had been the best of his year at two years old, and was about to run for the great event of the afternoon. Of course his prospects and pretensions formed the subject of our discourse. He made no question about the result, and frankly told me the reason for his confidence. He had given a hundred guineas for a trial with The Hero, and the performance was one which, should it be repeated that day, made the St. Leger safe. The animal never had a chance -never, in fact, showed in the running at all. Some hard constructions, it is true, were put upon the character of this trial; but there was certainly no logical or equestrian necessity to go to sharp practice for a solution of the problem. Cheap stakes furnish the two things needful for the fair touchstone of a race-horse's quality: his fitness to run in large fields and in public. The whole process of training tends to cultivate in a horse the spirit of unsociableness or shyness. He is kept aloof, both at home and abroad, from all familiarity with his fellows; at exercise he is carefully held apart from his stable companions; and probably he has never come in contact with a stranger under any circumstances till he meets one, or perhaps a score, at the starting post. It is easy to conceive that horses do not foregather kindly when thus associated. Would their masters feel at ease in a crowd of which they had never seen a single individual before in the course of their lives? I am persuaded these 10 sovs. Sweepstakes will be found one of the most practical contributions to the practical department of horse-racing.

I anticipate your critique, fair sir.... Set an Englishman down to turkey and truffles, and he'll ask you for the natural history of subterranean mushrooms. Practical-methodical-ever matter-of-fact! Dulce est dissipere in loco-but not to John: it's gall to him— hyssop-poison!.... Perhaps you are right, as to the principle, but not its application. You distort his instinct. He belongs to, or rather he constitutes, a class of moral amphibia; he is by nature merry and wise. The canon of his social end was written by a philosopher of the last century-" That man is deceived, who thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure by a constant pursuit of sports and recreations: for all these things, as they refresh a man when weary, so they weary him when refreshed." But if you must have the pleasure animal, seek it on the banks of the Seine, as nearly in the geographical distribution of Paris as possible. No nation understands doing nothing so well as France. This is by no means meant as a reproach, it is intended as a compliment. Nihility is not a French fact. Englishman," observed a flaneur, who was discussing an ice at Tortoni's, "An Englishman-of talent-can now and then contrive to live upon nothing; but a Parisian can not only live upon nothing, but he can save money upon it." Therefore, why should he take any heed for the future? Why should he work? Why should he think? He don't." Pleased with himself," as Goldsmith sings, he makes

"An

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happiness" his "being's end, and aim," no matter what its denomi nation. Look upon the chivalry of the Champs Elysées, and you would say that the last recreational resource of La Belle Nation would be the turf. You would be wrong. When the gallant Duc d'Orleans set up a racing stud, and imported a Newmarket taste and George Edwards, all Paris, all France, became possessed by a pas sion for Olympics. But not à l'Anglaise. So for such as object to hints about trials and training, about sweepstakes and handicaps, the handicraft of the sport, here is the sketch of a meeting at Chantilly, from a pen dipped in the essence of the Italian Boulevards....

On the day of which I speak, Chantilly had an unusual appearance of fête. All rich Paris, the Paris of the idle and the young, who know how to make even their leisure and their follics useful, had repaired to the vast pelouse. The forest was as animated as at its most brilliant fêtes of Saint Hubert: the stables had re-assumed all their importance and summoned all their pride. It was the day of great pains and great acclamations, an hour of complete triumph for the horses, for the young men, and for the ladies-three aristocracies which agree admirably well. The arena was the turf of Chantilly, turf covered with Olympic glory-saving the dust. The tents had been erected since the morning; the road was traced, the goal was marked out beforehand. In the stables, in their magnificent stalls, the eager coursers, impatient for glory, pawed the earth with their feet, and displayed the flashing eye, the open nostril, the mane flowing in the wind.' (Widdicombe! Read this: and put on a second immortality.) "Soon the trumpets began. It is time to arrive, for the arena will open to the very moment. The hurry is great-the eagerness unanimous-the confusion complete! The brilliant calash arrives post, laden with feathers, flowers, and sweet smiles; the peasant comes at a hand trot on his little horse, carrying his young daughter behind him, as curious and animated as if she were going to a ball. Long wicker vehicles come walking, bearing whole families, rich farmers, who from the height of their cariole see without envy those beautiful ladies in the silken calash. Here all vehicles rank alike; here all horses are equal, the dragoon's horse and the labourer's. But at last every one is in his place. We now only wait the heroes of the entertainment-the princes of the day. Sound, ye trumpets! and you herald, open the field!

"What a drama! What effects! What assembled beauties of different kinds! What vigour! How bolly the nimble coursers throw themselves into the field! What power, what energy! You see them-now you see them no longer! They leap forwards: you think it is the race. No, it is mere play. They run a league to take breath. Thus they try the field; they recognize the earth; they look at the men; they look at each other, and admire each other, and really think that the palm will be difficult to gain. At the given signal, they suddenly start. At first you would think that they were walking next that they run; then that they fly! The fascination is at its height. Each one holds his breath in order to see them better, so many hopes are placed upon these noble steeds! What pleasure! The course of Chantilly! The attentive crowd! The ladies who forget to observe each other, that they may look at a horse! Bets, in which pride has yet more interest than fortune! This is the drama!

This is the theatre! and for actors, you have the most beautiful, the most artless, the most charming, the most admirable creatures. To tell you victory for victory, the name of the rivals, to tell you word for word the details of the race, would be impossible. And, besides, how can I describe a defeat which is decided in a quarter of a second? How can I take upon myself to put in the first or second place the eager competitors of the race course? Let us leave these little particulars to the sporting gentlemen and as for us, as the French fabulist says, ne forçons point notre talent.

"Very soon another race is announced, the race for the Gold Cup. The cup is passed through the ranks, so that every one can see it. This time it is not a large piece of gold or silver without shape and without style-it is an elegant work, artistically formed by one of those ingenious sculptors which France alone possesses at the present day, by Antonin Moine, or M. Triquety, or M. Klagmon, the beloved children of Celline. The cup, when gained, is carried off in great triumph by the owner of the horse; and the same evening, under the arched roof of Chantilly, the winning horse, without being any the prouder for it, eats his hay from the golden cup, by the side of his vanquished rivals...... But there is yet another race, and the most difficult of all. This time it is a struggle of man to man and horse to horse, between the owners of these fine steeds. On this occasion the interest is increased, for the struggle which was between horses is to be between inen-there is now at once a race and a danger. There is a field to cross and a hedge to clear: you must arrive and be the first to leap. There is a costume adopted expressly for this race, in which elegance and simplicity are happily combined: long boots, buckskin indispensables, a red silk shirt, a rich front, elegant cuffs, a little velvet cap on the head, and within all this a handsome young man of twenty-five years of age. Thus dressed he mounts his horse, and you at once see that he is its master. Our cavaliers start then at the first signal, leaping the hedges as if they would break their own necks and kill their horses-such is this race. It has been brilliant, animated, hardly contested, and without accident. All have done their duty, the horses and the men."

Such is an Olympic sketch after the French school-" in seipso totus teres atque rotundus "--from the steed eating his hay out of the cup which he has just won, "without being any the prouder for it," and the cavalier mounted for the steeple-chase in a red silk shirt, with elegant ruffles, and a rich front. We mount these matters differently in perfidious Albion; the national bias is certainly more practical than picturesque just now in all that concerns the turf. I met with a passage in a leader of the Times the other morning, which-mutato nomine-would most probably serve for an article on horse-racing a few years hence. "We trust now the madness and immorality of the late disgraceful season of railway" (Q. D. racing) "speculation has passed away, that the public will return to the old weights and measures, by which the morality or immorality, the guilt or probity of human actions was estimated. There was, no long time back, a code of ethics substituted for our old standard of right and wrong; and according to this, common honesty was made synonymous with imbecility-a detected knave might be a simpleton, but a successful sharper was certainly the Aristides" (!! what Derby was that?) of

his time. Men of desperate fortunes and shattered characters, who, when the world travels on its accustomed path, are to be seen slinking about in low coffee-houses, and dodging the sheriff's officers from the lodging-house they have bilked to the billiard-room, where they hope to earn the means of a night's intemperance-the refuse of the hangers-on about the Stock Exchange and the turf-low attorneys, the opprobrium of the name;"

(The gaping gulph low in the centre lies,

And twice as deep as earth is distant from the skies.)

"who are put in the index at the Law Institution-the off-scourings of our great towns-in a word, were, by a singular revolution in human affairs, for a short time erected into a power amongst us of such efficacy that their inspirations pervaded every nook and cranny of society. Consider the history of a railway" (racing)" speculation, not as it now is, but as it was a short time ago, and the method in which the speculators, who were not contented to take rank amidst the category of mere dupes, expected to make their money." The French turf-such as it was-perished with the first-born of the Count de Neuilly the English turf, as it is, will cease to be when the dies iræ shall fall upon it-like that which has already overtaken railway policy. In the meanwhile, hybrid though it was, there was much to be met with on the course at Chantilly that might with advantage be adopted at our more thorough-bred meetings. Racing, as a sport, is still the same noble and appropriately national pastime that it was when it was regarded and adopted simply as parcel of a gentleman's recreations: the materials are as wholesome and palatable as ever-it is the fashion in which they are exhibited that does the mischief.

:

"At simul assis

Miscueris elixa, simul conchylia turdis;

Dulcia se in bilem vertent."

Field sports are already on the wane. Partridge .shooting has closed for the season, and so has that of the pheasant "the flying purple," which Jules Janin, the most flowery of Dian's disciples, says, "throws gold and azure into the air." Game has fallen into the hands of the sons of Zeruiah, as Sidney Smith called the lawyers: between these gentry and the philanthropists well may we exclaim with Byron

"Oh! nut-brown partridges-ah! brilliant pheasant!" their days seem numbered in the land. A newspaper of a recent date contained the following paragraph :-" THE GAMB LAWS.-In consequence of the tenantry under Lord John Scott complaining of the damage done by the game to their crops, &c., his lordship has destroyed the whole of his extensive preserves in Warwickshire, dismissed his keepers, and given directions to the tenants to keep the game down by shooting all that they see on the land in their occupation." His lordship certainly could not have devised a more radical remedy. "Because thou art virtuous, shall there be no more cakes and ale?" The booths of silver hazard have disappeared from our race-courses; the thimble rig is taboo'd; the birds of pleasant plumage, that win us early to the field, and welcome us late at the