of Scythian; but no demonstration was made till the Derby jacket was fairly in front of the Grand Stand, when some silly fellow gave a cheer. Twenty hisses at least drowned it, and Wells and Marson glanced back in astonishment at poor “Sim," who sat as pale as a sheet, with his left arm bowed and resting on his thigh as usual, enduring a regular battery of hisses and abuse. Counter cheers then arose, and opposite the nobleman's stand the uproar was in full chorus. Ivan and Scythian stopped the way farther on; so Templeman, seeing there was no time to be lost, jumped off before he reached the weighinghouse, stripped off his saddle in no time, and threaded his way, as best he could, through the fast closing angry groups. John Scott, who had come to the horse's head, was not so lucky. “He's smiling; look at him," roared some indignant Acrobatian; and that was enough. The battle had begun, and poor John, cut off from the weighingstand, retreated towards the side door of it, the Secretary of the Spring Meeting and one or two others just getting to his side in time. Luckily, Harry Broome was hard by, and on he rushed like an avalanche to the rescue, making a regular lane for himself, and striking so vigorously that he not a little astonished one or two of his own side. The battle then became general in the space between the two stands ; General Broome doing prodigies of valour, and Messrs. Adkins, Coyle, an eminent counsel, and Scott's Doncaster friends (who were fit to cry afterwards at such an insult to their old neighbour) working like men till poor Scott reached the welcome door. Harry Broome, who declared that he was so out of form that he could scarcely have stood twenty minutes, mounted guard on the . steps, reminding not a few “outsiders” of the days when the “lionhearted Jackson" and his twelve picked men kept the Abbey doors at George the IV.'s coronation. The crowd still rushed so recklessly into the space, that they did not seem to know that Scott had escaped, and was looking down from the weighing stand, at intervals, on the struggling mass beneath, and for nearly ten minutes they hustled each o:her in the most frantic way. The groups outside were not idle with their tongues. Young blades who did not join the fight gave opinions that “it served him right, Demmy!” on which a furious Scottite instantly dared them to prove their words, or engage in single combat then and there. Another Scottite got up on a form to make a speech, and was just, with outstretched finger, requesting his auditors to “tak a just view of Acrobat's running at

York. You see Ivan -”, when some one came under him, and, saying “ Shut up,” gave him such a dig in the waistband that Cicero swiftly descended from his eminence, gasping. Another of the opposite persuasion, with a face perfectly purple with passion, and in an agricultural garb, clenched his fists in impotent rage, and performed a savage Cherokee dance in front of the Nobleman's Stand. “ Come down to me, you rascals,” he shouted, “come down ! Oh, if I had nobbut my old gun I'd shoot you all. Come down, if you're half men!" Another with a great blue umbrella that Mrs. Gamp would have loved, and performing a pas seul the while, went feeling about with it over the heads of the crowd, and requesting to have the head of Lord Derby, or any other “of them aristocrats " pointed out to him, forthwith, that he might “smash it.” At last, after a quarter

of an hour, came a calm ; a false report went round that Lord Derby had vaulted over the rails, and that seemed to satisfy the malcontents, who condescended to soothe their feelings by watching Virago. Young John nudged his father after she was saddled, and said, “ Non, father, be off up the Stand; for if she makes a mistake, they'ú be wanting you next ;” and away went old John accordingly. However, the mare gave Kingston no chance; and, when Amy had landed a £50 pot for Aldcroft, and a good deal more for her friends (Why was Rylstone so crushed by the handicappers each day ?), the crowd walked in thoughtful mood home, pondering over such a row as has perhaps never before been seen on a race-course. Ruby and Nelly Hill's match, at 8st. 7lbs.each, never got into the card; and very few saw the former walk over. The weight was too much for Nelly, but she is far the quickest starter of the day, and Virago the slowest. In fact, at Worcester she was six lengths a-head of her field in an instant, and seemingly converted a very good into a very bad start.

The riot, and its origin, is about as difficult of explanation as the meaning of “ THE PRINCESS OF THE BURNING EYES; OR, THE MARE JINGLE AND THE LUMINOUS HAT," which I see underlined at one of the saloons. My impression is that early in the spring Whitewall got very much crabbed on finding that a large party out of the stable believed, on very good authority, that Acrobat was far better than Dervish, and had backed him heavily for the Derby accordingly. At last a very general belief in the fact arose; but, although thousands were laid out on the horse, the odds were laid so keenly by parties who knew pretty well about the stable, that (in spite of his match and the Chester Cup) he never rose above 20 to 1. Dervish, too, showed such wonderful speed in his sheeted gallops, that the pair were most probably never tried ; and the stable either believing, or not choosing to disbelieve, that Dervish was best, scratched Acrobat for the Derby, and effectually punished the parties who first backed the horse. Had they prepared and started him, there seems no earthly doubt that Andover would have had to do his very utmost to beat him. Dervish's sad Epsom display annoyed “the gentlemen in the hole” still more; and the pertinacity with which the stable stuck to him even after his Goodwood mess, and the direct line which was thus afforded the public of the merits of the two, through Arthur Wellesley, had not a soothing effect. The son of Ithuriel seemed fairly ham-strung, and no plucky believer was found to offer £4000 or so for him, and thus test the stable's real St. Leger belief in him. Dervish, it is true, at last faded into insignificance, but the roarer Boiardo (whom Alfred Day declares to have been winning the St. Leger, till his legs failed) took his place, and yet Acrobat, only third in the trial, wins at York as cleverly as ever horse won. It was reported that all three were to run on their merits at Doncaster; and Sim says, and no doubt with truth, that “they may biss till they're hoarse, but I could not get the horse an inch forwarder.” To this, the public answer-The stable did not want to win with him, because it would either prove that they had made a fearful mistake about their best Derby horse, or had not chosen to try them, that they might have a good excuse for scratching the animal, who had been taken liberties with, Scott's friends assert that the St. Leger course was too long for the horse, and that a mile and a half is his forte. It is difficult to believe this, as he covered the Chester Cup course very cleverly, and was ridden to boot by a little monkey who belonged to the winner's stable, and who stood to win nearly a monkey on that winner. Hence, he was made to race against every horse that came to the front, and finished a good third after all such usage; in fact, such was John Scott's dismay at seeing his orders defied, that he collared the lad and shook him till his teeth rattled again. In the Doncaster Stakes too, the horse did not show the slightest signs of having had enough, and, therefore, we cannot accept the short-distance theory, but incline to the belief that he had not done enough work to win a St. Leger. The stable must have known this, or they would never have brought him out, and given him a two-mile gallop over the hard ground on Thursday night, to make the Doncaster Stakes safe on the following day. Well might the great and wise Newmarket tout keep shouting to John Scott on Langton Wold, for some weeks past, when he saw how little work the horse did,“ Send him along John Scott-send him along ; or he'll get you into a row before you're many days older." Well, too, might a great Yorkshire sportsman, in the first outburst of vexation at the riot, vow and protest that he would race no more !

The Songstress-bitten tykes were quite as angry as the Manchester men, and a match between Acrobat and Ivan, at the St. Leger distance, will alone set the question at rest.

NOCTES VENATICÆ.

BY SCRIBBLE.

CONVERSATION THE SIXTH.

Uncle S.-At last, my dear boy! I am delighted to see you. Now there's a prospect of my hearing what sort of sport you have had in Scotland.

Nephew.-Oh, the public accounts are tolerably correct, as to that.

Uncle 8.-If by “ public accounts” you mean the lists of killed and wounded in Bell's Life and The Field, I suppose they are; but I feel very little interest in knowing the amount of shots fired by the Hon. Captain Grouser, or the number of head that fell to the guns of Lord Coppercap and his friend and toady, Major Flint. I should like to hear something about the heather, the dogs, the straight powder, the hill-side bivouac, and the mountain breezes; Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis, Loch This and Loch T'other--something that St. John or Whyte Melville might have written, or my friend Gêlert could have told, with glistening eye and ringing voice. If I were young again, and on the hill-side, I think I could have cooked up a dainty dish from such a bill of fare.

Neph.--You mean, sir, that it's not much use being a sportsman, unless a man's somewhat of a liar into the bargain. I've no talent that way: you should fall back upon the periodicals—the sporting periodicals. It's a privilege that belongs, however, to a sportsman.

Uncle 8.-Of which they have been cruelly deprived by the officers of Her Majesty's Forty-si

Neph.-Hold hard, my dear sir! pray hold hard! We have had nothing but that very simple affair for the last six weeks. Whenever we were at a loss for conversation, we served up the Colonel, the Major, the Captains, and the miserable subs of that most miserable lot; and I must add that, though we peppered them well, and cut them up after the most approved fashion, we found them the most indigestible, tooth-breaking articles of consumption we ever came across : but if you want a handsome spell about the dewdrops and heatherbells, the morning mists and evening sunsets, interspersed with romances on our exploits among the red and black game, I beg to refer you to the N.S.M., in the pages of which amusing periodical, from the well-known assurance of its contributors and the digestive capabilities of its readers, you will doubtless find

Uncle S.-Not one word of the subject. No: I acknowledge my disappointment. I looked forward to the September number as a repository of facts or fiction upon one of the subjects most susceptible of graphic beauty in the world. A fortnight in a country as romantic, as picturesque as Switzerland, a sport which has been described as the foxhunting of shooting, with all those little etceteras of which we have been talking, might have furnished one pen with matter for discussion. Not a bit of it! You know, my boy, how easy-going an old fellow your uncle is—a man who takes things as he finds them without complaining Far be it from me to say a word against those kind and considerate public servants who have favoured us with their “ Reminiscences” and “ Rambles," their “ Passions" and their “Pencillings :" the perspicuity of Craven, the historical research of Greybeard, and the witticisms of Tom Oliver (which, alas for The Druid! have been anticipated by Charles Dickens—but kindred minds and great wits jump) are as interesting to me as ever. They serve plenty of purposes. Sometimes I take them up because I want to go to sleep, and cannot ; at others, I take them up because I want to keep awake, and—no, I will not say cannot; the compliment would be too equivocal. All I mean to say is this--that I am griev. ously disgusted at not seeing any account of “Sport in the Highlands” or “ The Gun in the Lowlands,” and am compelled to fall back upon you for my information.

Neph.- I am no great hand at giving information : unhappily, I have been bred up in a school where women were considered to do the talking, and men the business of life. However, since my increased intimacy with you, my dear uncle, I have learned to set a due value on the males of the family, even for their powers of conversation. As to the sport, altogether, it was bad-a bad breeding season, and wet at the beginning of it, which always makes grouse wild. They had suffered much, too, from tapeworm in many places. I went with Smith (one of the De Smiths who came over with the Conqueror); he's a good fellow, and a bad shot. You know we were

tolerably intimate in town, but we got heartily sick of one another before the birds began to pack. Our best bag was about twenty-five and a-half brace, of which I killed about two-thirds. We had bad dinners ; and Smith hates bad cooking (so do I, for the matter of that): and the accommodation was not over-good-beds hard, and not enough pillows. You can't think what a different fellow Smith is in Bond-street, in July, or at a Greenwich dinner. 'Pon my word, he's the pleasantest fellow alive-never out of temper. But, down in Scotland, where you live with a fellow all day, and have nothing to do when you can't shoot, it's not such smooth sailing.

Uncle S.-Was the moor as good as you expected ?

Neph. — Well, not altogether. Lots of room and heather, but not quite so many birds as might have been hoped for. I can't help suspecting our keeper; for we took him on the recommendation of the fellow who let us the moor. George Kennelford had some good sport there last year ; but he sent his own man down early in the summer. Our fellow seemed on capital terms with every blackguard we came across; and be made some very unnecessary visits to Backna-something or other, the railway station, on his own account.

Uncle S.-And your dogs? how did they turn out?

Neph.-We were rather done. Two of them we shot forth with; a brace we gave away to a man who had left his behind on the rail, and wanted to have a day before they could reach him; and certainly, if he got a shot by their assistance, it's more than we did. I have one here--not such a bad nose, but he doesn't down charge--that is, not exactly—and he sometimes won't back.

Uncle S.--That must be a valuable animal. Has it never occurred to you that shooting, like other things, to be good, must be properly looked after ? that you must know your dogs and your men ? and that the trouble of looking over your ground beforehand is recompensed by good sport and good temper? I should be more inclined to condemn you than the moor, after all. What became of your man“ with the lungs and vocabulary,” whom you hired to do the objurgations?

Neph.--Ah, that was an extraordinary rascal! The second day, he stole back one of the dogs he sold us, and took Smith's single gun, with which he walked off, intending to shoot his way back to the Edgeware-road, I imagine. He was taken, however, last week, and lodged in gaol in Perth. Smith's waiting to prosecute, which he thinks rather a bore. I told him it was only a breach of trust; but Smith always knows more than other people at least, while he was in Scotland he did.

Uncle 8.—Then you really had no dogs worth a farthing?

Neph. On the contrary, sir. Smith's black setter was, and I trust is, a really excellent animal; but we had a little accident with her at the end of the first week, or we should have bagged a hundred head more, I dare say. The fact is, that grouse fly very low sometimes; and on this occasion I had killed my first bird, and let drive with the second barrel at a bird on the left, which also dropped, when Juno, whom I had no more seen than if she had been in the Mountains of the Moon, set up a hideous howl: the long and the short of the story being that I had shot poor Juno through the leg, which lost us her services for the rest of the time. Smith was in a great rage.