quire. The telegraph was adopted as a convenient substitute for this anticipatory race; but, to make it such effectually, the horse so put up should be treated de facto as a starter. The trio for the Glasgow consisted of Osterley, Tiresome, and Drakelow-won by a neck as here placed. The winner was said to be quite unfit, so that his achievement thereby was invested with an additional éclat. Tiresome was the favourite both were Mr. Mostyn's nominations. Have they missed the pick of the basket? . . . . . . Friday, as aforesaid, rained cats and dogs. There was no end of the sport, as they grinned and called it-fourteen races!—during which the jokers in mackintosh were on a (water) level with the jockeys in sarsenet. I can't call to mind anything that was "worth the water," as the French say of the candles. Glendower gave half a stone to Ulysses in a Match, T.Y.C., for a couple of hundred, "and got beat," as the professional grammar goes. The First Class of the Nursery Stakes Strongbow won, in a lot of nine; Garrick second, getting 1lb. from the winner. Second Class: Tiresome first, with 8st. 5lbs. up; Clarissa second, 7st. 11lbs. ; and Drakelow third, 8st. 7lbs. -2lbs. more than the winner-his conqueror in the Glasgow; but I do not intend this as any reflection on the weights. Saturday wound up the tug of war for winter supplies with lots of little goes-of no use to any one but the owner. With a town "full of horses," as you were assured, and with those who knew well how to turn them to account, as you know without the assistance of any information, that there was racing as long as there was anything to race for, or any one to race with, follows as matter of course. I hope all were satisfied; though I confess such a belief would be beyond the romance of credulity. With this meeting we will bring our narration of the turf in '48 to an end; and, with the reader's leave and indulgent licence, proceed to theorize anent its details, meditating as we scribble our desultory page upon what was done--and who. ... Among the many promblematical effects of steam may be reckoned the contributions to the turf for which England is its creditor as regards certain Irish speculations. The first names that I find on the debtor side of the account for the current year are those of Ballinafad and Peep-o'-day Boy Wherein were two things equally amusing; At least so it turned out in the sequel-a lucky" chance," as the word is rendered in the swells' vocabulary. Spring work commenced early, and with great carnestness. From Northampton to Chester pencils had no pause the Trades Cup and the Derby were the cynosures of the million; but not so as to monopolize speculation. The premium offered by the licensed victuallers at the Epsom Spring Meeting commanded ample custom. The tryst, indeed, was not very distingué, as Mrs. Slipslop would say; neither had the publicans and sinners all to themselves. Lord Eglinton won the Great Metropolitan Handicap, “with a bonus of £500 added, &c., &c."- -a slice of good luck which some persons have been credulous enough to attribute to the eulogy of sweeps and lotteries pronounced a short time before by that nobleman in the House of Peers. The threatening aspect of the political atmosphere kept many at their post in London, who otherwise would have been at the post on Newmarket Heath, to open the campaign with the Craven. However, the chartist rebellion having turned out "a weak invention," they were soon released from the metropolis to wrestle with "the enemy" elsewhere. It was, however, an affair of the " small beer" class, without a particle of flavour. The First Spring was a little better. Flatcatcher being permitted to win the Two Thousand by grace of the Goodwood stable, was instituted a leader by the ring; and Canezou's victory for the One Thousand left the policy of the Oaks where the capture of Paris did the destinies of France. Peep-o'-day Boy won the rich Chester Handicap, that he couldn't win-pish! and Flatcatcher having beaten Shylock for the Dee Stakes, the latter became the representative of Mr. Green's lot for the Derby, at the cost, it was said, of £3,000. If so, Lord Caledon had the best of the deal. But there is no limit to what people will say about turf transactions. I read in a morning journal that Lord George Bentinck had won eighty thousand pounds on the last St. Leger! About this period diabolical on dits began to abuse the public ear concerning the Derby. If the devil himself had been first commissioner at Tattersall's they could not have been worse. I'd rather not hint at them. The reader, good honest man! will come at conclusions for himself. Horses were to be made safe; jockeys were to be bought, and masters sold. Is he familiar with the poetical works of the late Mr. Hook? If so, perhaps he remembers the wail for William Weare; it begins "They cut his throat from ear to ear, His brains they punched in-"” We say nothing. The victim was subsequently placed" in a sack well stitched!" Horrible!! ..... "With his legs stuck up in the air." Ah! those "legs!" how naturally the author places them!.... Don't suppose I want to frighten you from visiting Epsom. On the contrary, it's the paradise of places assigned to horse courses. Mr. Dorling has transformed the Grand Stand into a palace proper-a heavenly receptacle, compounded of Solomon's Temple and the Café de Paris. Indeed, I doubt whether Solomon or his son together furnished their house, in one particular, half as dazzlingly as the lessee of the stand aforesaid-but, verbum sapienti. The Second Spring having produced nothing of account, Surplice-the best two-year-old that had been bred and brought out for many a season-was at "evens" for the Derby when that mighty issue was to be decided. The son of Touchstone and Crucifix stood in the "lists" like the offspring of Jupiter and the lady to whom Phillip the Second, of Macedon, was married. Ile won, with the closest of shaves for it; and some said Springy Jack "ought to, as no doubt they felt. But this race was undoubtedly to the swift, whatever many of its predecessors have been-" and will be again," says Paddy. I solemnly protest I mean no scandal about the Cesarewitch. The Oaks came upon the market with a sort of surprise ; for a filly, with the aristocratic title "Do-it-again," was pronounced a Danebury nonsuch. Cymba, however, was the winner. Let no man henceforth keep a breeding establishment unless he desires to have “a donkey of his own." The crowds at Epsom this year beat all the assemblages on record before or since Darius gave Alexander the Great the meeting. In some particulars it is probable that the Surrey tryst had the pull, for the Persian monarch is said to have had only a couple of hundred cooks and a thousand waiters, whereas Mr. Henry Dorling had five times that number at least..... I don't know a prettier plaything of a course than that at Newton. Furthermore, the racing is very good-but what then? it's only sport. Base is the slave of the ring who plays unless it pays. Ascot Heath is a rendezvous, whereof the motto is "Spectatum veniunt: veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ ;" and whoever the "ipse" may be, their chaperons are not ashamed. If the Court be there, so much the better for the miscellaneous gapers if the Court be absent, so much the better for the subject to be gaped at. This year, in consequence of the recent demise of her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia, her Majesty did not honour the accustomary two days with her presence. The weather was a sample of the skiey influences which were to follow; cold, damp, with "occasioual sunshine." The races were very indifferently attended, and the business was not up to the ordinary average at the royal course. Vampyre carried off the Ascot Stakes and the Great Western Plate, putting over £2,000 into the Duke of Richmond's purse, and so shut up his account for the season. The Queen's Vase Gardenia won, and that was the extent of her earnings for this year of grace; and Springy Jack challenged his Derby form by doing similarly with the Welcome Stakes. Without balancing books any further, it may be lawful to wind up with the victory of the Hero for the Emperor's Vase, the last achievement worthy his fame, to which the Calendar for '48 will bear witness. Ascot was not itself. Hereabouts-that is to say, as to dateall over England the turf was in full operation. No doubt the social jeopardy of the world had a sinister influence upon the social junketting of this "tight little island" (heir tight in the matter of its loyalty), but things were much better than might have been expected. We will not touch upon the provincial "business," save to notice the "stars," such as the Northumberland Plate for instance, won easily by Chanticleer, after a very promising début at Manchester. The summer meeting at Newmarket brought out The Flying Dutchman, the best performer of his year, "all to sticks," as Tom Hood has his comparisons. He won twice, the July being one of his victories. He continued his career at the Liverpool July races, and, with Elthiron, made the fielders shake in their books before the omnipotence of the Eglinton stud. At these latter olympics Flatcatcher continued to support his dignity. He is the only one of a numerous race that is not ashamed of the family name. The Aintree arrangements are such as befit the metropolis of the provinces; quite as much cannot be said of the moral position of the "bold peasantry" by whom it is frequented. Goodwood, whose popularity will long live in the annals of the English turf a grateful and a melancholy memorial, came in "heavily with clouds"-meet herald of the anniversary. I have met "winter and rough weather" full often on the Sussex downs, but never such an "out-and-out" day throughout as the 25th of last July. I have no recollection of a worse, except its successor, the 26th. Everybody you met had a word of horror for its effect upon "the ground," but not a syllable for its probabilities upon the potatoes. And yet it's no child's play, your Irish rebellion without murphies. The sport, as of courtesy we will call it, was monstrous. Foremost amongst its features were the ignominious defeats of Surplice. As Lord Clifden's horses went shortly afterwards into the hands of a Newmarket trainer, I may be allowed to say the form of the winner of the Derby, after the Gratwicke, was indeed very unlike the cynosure of all observance that witched the ring on Epsom downs. Not that this is intended to convey the shadow of a shade of reflection upon Kent, who brought him out peerlessly in Surrey, and would have done so in Sussex, nature permitting. The running of Van Tromp was of rare excellence. I do not mean to say that the result of the Croesus race for the 300 sovs. sweepstakes, worth £3,600, let out the mystery of the Derby '47, but the fashion in which the Cup was contested proved him to be an animal that the turf only sees when the one in ten thousand stands the probationary course of a "crack" in the middle of the nineteenth century. For this latter event there was a French Eclipse, hight Fitz-Emilius, that they said would win. He went the first three quarters of a mile as if the distance were the T.Y.C. Chanticleer, the winner of the Goodwood Stakes, could not live the speed for the first hundred yards. This his friends attributed to his labours on the previous day, but his queror had no holiday on Tuesday. A good deal of the running was, no doubt, "false," for the condition of the course was such as only extraordinary constitutional powers have a chance with. The four days, it must be said, were far below the general average of their éclát. con At Brighton racing is an excuse for an appetite at dinner, and at Wolverhampton the handicap stands in the same relation to the business. York was of account, forasmuch as it brought forward the first favourite for the St. Leger-that was to be-for Springy Jack being polished off, we had Justice to Ireland to reign in his stead for a time. But Lord Stanley having declared he was undecided whether she should go, or be kept for the Park Hill, had no doubt a good deal to do with the status of Canezou in the market. September was rife with racing excitements. At the head of these was the St. Leger. The field was a short one, but big with fortune. Justice to Ireland turned out another mistaken attempt of that ilk. Surplice and Canezou made a match of the great "Champion" trial, and the colt won. The settlement was beyond precedent bad; and the next week brought far more heavy news. The event was spoken of at the time: it will be long before it is forgotten. No patron of our national sports ever won golden opinions by more honourable service than Lord George Bentinck. The turf may truly assign to him for a motto, "sat est vixisse." "Once more upon the" heath. The First October week at Newmarket was not of remarkable brilliancy. We had Surplice again a winner, and-voilà tout-or thereabouts. The Second October Meeting frighted the town from its propriety. Tag-rag and bobtail rushed to it, as already set forth, cheaper than they could have staid at home; and the doings consequent thereon beggar description, as they also did several of the company. The notice of it in our last number leaves little to be said of detail; and what remains to be told would be more honoured in the omission. The Cesarewitch was the monster incident, and it turned out "Horrendum, informe- cui lumen ademptum." Lanesborough was "scratched"-" lumen ademptum”—that is to say, and nobody is the wiser-as to the movers of the catastrophe. Mr. 66 Murphy, his owner, has written a letter to the newspapers, wherein he admits that he did what he ought not to have done; but urges that he was induced to do it by those who subsequently put him in the hole." They cajoled him to dig privily for the feet of others. But he has omitted a very material point of his evidence. He has forgotten to say who they were. Murphy, perhaps, is no logician: let some one interpret for his learning the axiom, "De non apparentibus et non existentibus, eadem est ratio"..... The Houghton was all racing, as set forth at the commencement of this article. It went to show the cnormous matériel of our turf; and, from such premises, the need there is of "wary walking." And here, reader kind, I would that I might set my finis on this sheet, merely bidding thee, as most honestly I wish for thee and thine such fortune, a merry Christmas and happy new year. But there is an episode that must be told, haply to "point a moral," albeit not to "adorn my tale". . . . . If during the current scason you were familiar with the principal courses of the kingdom, you could not choose but mark a creature "so dull, so spiritless, so woe-begone," that he seemed more like one 66 "Whose bones, long cased in earth, Had burst their cerements,' Per than the associate of a merry-making. That mockery of a man was all that the ring had left of "Old Mack,' as "Shamrock" (himself long since gone "down among the dead men') designated one of the best of his Irish gentlemen-jocks, by name William MacDonough. adventure you may have read how, in the past month, his dies iræ fell upon him; when, entering a chamber where people are wont to assemble to speculate on the chances of a bullet, he despatched one upon a mission that was sure..... Thus fell, full of agony and despair, the latest known victim to the dreadful trade of betting. He had qualities that might have won for him a far different fate. His heart was dauntless, yielding only when for a long lone season "sorrow had been there with its iron plough ;" and his intents were honourable, failing only when his poverty and not his will" consented. Some short time ago, I had occasion to speak with him about his position and prospects-or rather, I should say, he introduced the subject himself. He talked as one in whom hope was dead. "I'm afraid I'm quite beat," he said; "but it is all my own fault. No one has been very hard upon me, except"—and he clenched his thin hand as he continued-"except one of my own countrymen. I owed him forty pounds; and, on the first day of races, I paid him thirty, and entreated he would give me till the end of the meeting for the other ten, as I had a sure thing coming off, if he wouldn't spoil my credit; and what was his reply, do you think? It was If you dare go near the ring, I'll drag you out of it by the neck!".... The miserable man ground out these words with an oath. May we not hope that, on the crime which so soon followed them, "the Recording Angel dropp'd a tear and blotted it out for ever"? Thus works a system which, from the folly of the few, has become the madness of the many. And shall not Britons do what they like with their own? Has the date of Magna Charta expired?. . . . . Fiat ruina, ruat Cælum! |