and Old England, of late years, always struck me as particularly low easy goers; while Sampson, Sir Tatton Sykes, and War Eagle were just the reverse. The former great lumbering animal, with Tommy Lye, in the Duke's colours, perched aloft on him, was a most remarkable spectacle; and I never saw Sir Tatton go so awkward as he did in his last winning race at York, against the Traverser. War Eagle, though as fine-looking a horse as was ever out, seemed to have his arms skewered tight to his shoulders, and "galloped under" (if I may be allowed the term), throwing all the pressure and tension on to his back-sinews so completely, that his premature break-down and emigration to Russia were not to be wondered at. His performances, considering the seconds he played for the Derby, Chester Cup, and Cambridgeshire Stakes (carrying 8st. 3lbs. in the latter), stamped him no ordinary horse; though his venerable owner's cherished hope of winning the Northamptonshire Stakes with him this year, at 8st. 13lbs., would, I fancy, have been proved futile by Fernhill, even if Charles Marson could have succeeded in preparing him for it. The nicest-looking horses I ever saw were Epirus and Faugh a Ballagh; and the condition of Vatican this year, at Doncaster, was such as, perhaps, has hardly ever been equalled. Many good judges stood against him for the Cazarewitch on that account, because they felt sure that such a looking-glass coat could not last for a month. Young Taylor, who has evidently profited by his veteran father's instructions, could have shaved himself by it during the Doncaster Meeting, and he looked nearly as well when he extinguished Honeycomb for the Duke Michael. "Oh, these Bay Middletons!" was Robinson's lamentation, as he alighted from that unfortunate and handsome imposter after he had vainly attempted to make running with him in the Doncaster 200 sovs. Sweepstakes. Lady Evelyn was, I think, one of the best made race-horses out last season, and a mile and a-half spin between her and Nunnykirk would have been a very near thing. She was undoubtedly the crack mare in the Oaks, and hence it was fortunate that the season which placed so many in the "criticals," on that day did not affect her. All-round-my-hat is the only mare that I remember seeing win well under these circumstances; and whenever I observe a mare running in that state, the memory will return of a would-be sporting friend of mine, who had a match on with his hunting mare for some £10 a-side. Finding, however, on the eventful day, that she was "indisposed," he ordered his groom to put her to a neighbouring cart-horse stallion, "in order to satisfy her, and get her up to the mark." The groom, who, like a good servant, never thought" when his master had once given him orders, and who would have promptly washed the works of his erring gold watch out with soap and water if he had been so directed by him, did as he was told; and my friend never doubted the sapient nature of his orders till the mare shut up the moment he called on her, and was unfit for use the next hunting season, with a little white-legged chestnut encumbrance.

66

The science of good training has become much more general since it used to be said that "Old Edwards's horses could be known in a crowd." Till lately, two northern trainers had strong respective failings of getting their horses ready too soon, and training them far too light. John Scott never falls into this latter fault, and, if anything, his horses are a trifle fleshy; though the training-ground of Pigburn has a hill, which, along with the ploughed gallop, which

the sporting farmers of the neighbourhood vie with each other to keep in order gratis, brings out their muscle in strong relief. The comfort of the Pigburn snuggery, which has a door leading into the stables, the greater part of which stand round a yard, is something unrivalled. All the winners which John Scott has trained, and poor Bill and Frank Butler ridden, and which now form a goodly company, adorn the walls; and if they were not as dumb as Turkish mutes, they could tell of many a jovial evening spent there, in which peers have borne a part. A political colloquy among some of the lads amused me much the last time I was there. It was to the effect that they trusted "as how them chaps in London wouldn't go and quarrel with the Roosian Hemperor, or there would be no Ascot Vase for Canezou to bone." Scott generally removes his horses in training to Pigburn soon after the Derby, as Langton Wolds get dreadfully hard early on in the summer. With such a training ground near them, Doncaster races ought never to go down; although the Jockey Club seem to care very little about them, and instead of making Doncaster a sort of "Newmarket removed," and bringing good strings down from Newmarket, they leave them entirely dependent for running horses upon the northern trainers. The entire revision of the list, and the handsome Eglinton prize of next year, will, it is to be hoped, effect a very great change. No man, however, to my mind, can say he has seen racing in perfection till he has been at Goodwood; and I never could find that there is any truth in the assertion which I once heard fall from the lips of a very clever trainer, that the water there was very apt to put strange horses out of condition. The old Manchester Course always struck me as being the very worst I ever saw for straining a horse; and Galaor, for one, was never fit for anything after he won twice there. Chester, of all others, I dislike most. It is very interesting to have the whole race under your nose ; but I cannot believe that the running is always true on such a toy-course. The Newmarket jockeys, who detest turns of all kinds, never seem at home there, Butler especially, whose riding is always in one of the extremes, and who, the Ring declare to this day, lost the Cup, both on Cossack and Mendicant, owing to nervousness at the turns. Robinson, he is also somewhat afraid of getting on a queer-tempered horse, and flatly refused to ride Archery at Liverpool last year; John Holmes, who declares that "he would ride the devil in a handicap if he could get him well in," taking his seat without the slightest demur, and winning into the bargain. To have heard the tremendous talk which Nat made at Manchester, when the Iron-Duke had taken a leap with him after winning the St. Leger Stakes, one would have thought that his nerve had failed him for life; but I suspect that he did not wish the horse to start against Mrs. Taft for the Salford Borough Cup, and wanted to frighten the boys from taking a mount. The wins of this lucky jockey, this season, are about 102 in number, and his emoluments, in Orlando's year, are said to have been nearly £7,000. In the excitement produced by the last Leger event, a sporting Alderney man, in my hearing, came to Marlow, and pledged himself most solemnly to send him "the finest milch-cow in the island." Mr. Waterton, the naturalist, accounted for his "having a fine hand on an alligator," from his having been accustomed to cross the country with the Badsworth ;” but the same can hardly be said of a ride over Chester Course and the

Like

Newmarket Flat. The gentlemen of Cheshire do not support their meeting with very great ardour, and hence all the work falls on Mr. Topham, who is although some nobs have christened him most unfairly the "B. Green handicapper"-to my mind one of the very best handicappers of the day. One of the greatest accessions to the Turf is the vast "B. Green" partnership, from which that gentleman is said to be gradually retiring, and leaving the whole of the ownership and management to the brothers Stebbing, one of whom now rivals the Leviathan in his system of double-event bets. The northern meetings would have lacked much interest for these two or three years past, if the "Grafton scarlet" had not been seen going to scale in the weighing-house; and no lad can force his way so resolutely through a crowd as its regular wearer, Charles Winteringham. Flatcatcher,* the last of their almost invincible 1847 two-year-old trio, is to be put to the stud next season. To my mind, for nerve, seat, and science, very few jockeys, if any, have the whip-hand of Job Marson. The loss of Lord Eglinton's riding has been a sad trouble to him, as certain losers and writers have chosen to assert, not only that he came "Harry Edwards" over his lordship's Van Tromp in the Derby of '47, but that his connection with the stable ceased in consequence of such a belief. If Van had struck his flag to inferior horses in that race, one might have thought that the accusation had something in it; but when every real turfite knows that he was by no means a horse of remarkable speed, though of undeniable bottom, and that he got nothing like the good start among the 31 which Cossack and War Eagle did, I do not see how the result can be wondered at. I have often heard Templeman say that the chesnut was one of the quickest horses for a mile and a half that he ever crossed; and after he had defeated War Eagle on him for the Newmarket Stakes, he made use of some such remark as this, "Wherever Cossack is in the Derby, War Eagle will be close at his girths." The extra distance at the St. Leger, and the superior form of Van Tromp was too much for him at Doncaster. True to his somewhat jady Hetman Platoff blood, it was all UP with him 500 yards from home; and in all longer distances ever since he has, as a matter of course, only seen Van's tail. Those, moreover, at Middleham, who are best informed on the matter, declare positively that Marson lost the Eglinton riding solely in consequence of an unfortunate but a most natural construction having been put on to a letter which he sent to his lordship, in the November of '47, requesting to be informed if his services would be required for the ensuing season, just at a time when the newspapers were propagating the most absurd reports as to his lordship's intention to sell his stud, in consequence of railway losses. I say this much because the non-handling of the steeringribbons of the Flying Dutchman, from the day that he first ran away from his "young friends" over the N. T. Y. C., at Newmarket, till he pumped all the wind out of Vatican over its D. I., must have been a sufficiently bitter mortification to him, without unkind insinuations against his honesty into the bargain.

Gentleman-riding has not progressed or receded; and at the York Hunt Mecting jockeys were allowed to ride in five of the races by carrying

* Since the above was written the stable have changed their minds, and put Flatcatcher into training again, with 45 companions.

some 6lbs. extra. It is to be regretted that we have not a large annual four-year-old race-colts 11st. and fillies 10st. 10lb., to be ridden by gentlemen qualified as at Goodwood-established at some one of our leading meetings. Mr. Osbaldeston, I believe, proposed something of the kind at Ascot, but somehow or other it fell through. Trainers and owners however, do not like "gentlemen riders," except they are at the very top of the tree: and it is a very stiff question to define what the term means. If it turns on a question of payment, there is as little real difference between many a soi-disant " gentleman rider" and a professional jockey as there was between two poor idiots named Sally and Johnny, whom I lately met with. With that instinctive dislike which such unfortunate people have to each other, Sally gave as her reason, when asked why she did not forthwith marry Johnny, that he was "soft;" and Johnny's strong objection to entering into nuptial ties with Sally was that she was "not sharp." Regular fox-hunters, who are above suspicion on the score of payment, seem to care very little for raceriding; though one solitary instance occurs to me of one of them suddenly imbibing such a passion for it, that for several successive days lately he regularly sat down to dinner, with his lady, in jockey attire. A good story is told of the exclusiveness of one of these regular foxhunting clubs, which was accustomed to hunt several good covers on the very border of its county. It so chanced that the property in which they were situated was put up for sale, and purchased by a retired merchant. Two gentlemen from the hunt called upon him, and requested leave still to hunt his covers. "Oh yes," replied the old buck, "I'll take care to preserve the foxes strictly for you; and you must make me a member, and put my name down for a £100 subscription.' Upon this, the spokesman hemmed and hawed, and at last stammered out that it was against the rules of the club to admit any one who had ever been connected with trade. On hearing this, the old merchant quietly remarked, that as he was not good enough to be a member, he must decline them the use of his covers: and a less aristocratic hunt, in a neighbouring county, hearing of the interview, applied at once, and have enjoyed the use of the covers and the subscription ever since, with hunt-breakfasts into the bargain. This sell was nearly as "extensive" as that lately given by a well-known huntsman of staghounds to a forward piece of coxcombry who had taken fright at his name, and changed it from ***lor to *leur. “I say, what do you call that 'ound?" was his enquiry one morning; and, "Why, Sir, we used to call him Jowler, but now we call him Jowleur," was the sarcastic reply, which made its recipient invisible for many days. I fear, however, that I have rambled on to too great a length with these reminiscences of the past, and gone the Beacon Course distance when the T.M.M. might have been more palatable to my readers. I can therefore only, in conclusion, trust that the racing season of 1850 may be as prosperous as the late one has been, and witness a match between Canezou and The Flying Dutchman, and be still further immortalized by a victory of English race-horses along the sand-flats of the Yellow Nile.

***

A race of this kind has been proposed for the Eglinton Park Meeting, 1850, since the above was written.

195

BITS AND BITTING.

BY HARRY HIEOVER.

(Continued.)

It seems reasonable to conclude that a snaffle (of some sort) was the first description of bit put into the horse's mouth by our ancestors, as being the most simple to manufacture; for long after the most classically designed buildings were erected, and those buildings adorned by the most elaborately executed ornaments, both internally and externally, the manufacture of iron was at a very low ebb, both as regards the variety of articles made, and the neatness of the workmanship; it is therefore quite probable that the self-same sort of bit that is still in use for the cart-horse (namely a bent piece of coarse iron, with two rings that took the reins) was the one in general use for the saddle horse.

About what time the curb-bridle was invented I am not well versed enough in history to even surmise; however some of our very ancient pictures show they have been in use from a remote period, and most clumsy things they are represented to have been; in fact, until the last peace, such a bit as we should call even decent, of continental manufacture, could not be got; in short, all continental horse appointments were the coarsest and rudest things imaginable: true they used silver ornaments in profusion, velvet saddles with gold fringe; but the stitching in a trace for a stage coach here was quite on a par with their neatest mode of stitching on a bridle-rein, and the pole hook of a well turned out drag is an exquisite piece of workmanship when compared with the French curb-bit of thirty years ago; this, if not absolutely rusty, was considered all that could be wished by the preux cavalier, and if all the accumu lated rust of years was on it, the valet de ecurie at the Cerf Volant, or the Lion d'or, or d'argent, would not have considered the traveller as of the less importance from such a circumstance: some different idea would have struck the knowing ostler at Botham's, at Salt Hill-some little quizzing would have gone round the yard. I have seen Monsieur le Baron drive into an inn-yard in a cabriolet that showed ostensible signs of its being at times a joint convenience as a perch between the baron and his poultry; but he drove it in with much more evident signs of his estimation of its importance, than Sir H. Peyton would his fourin-hand to either of the hotels in Richmond. The baron keeps a cabriolet "—it is a cabriolet, that is enough. This is all strange, or rather was strange, to an Englishman, for they do things differently there now; that is, fashionable people do.

There can be no doubt but that the true intent and use of a bridle is to restrain the horse, and subject him to the will of the rider; therefore whether this is effected by a rudely made piece of common iron, or by