mischief. For instance it is notorious that an obscure person, living in an obscure lane in the city, not very many removes from the Mansion House, has, by means of betting-lists promoted in his house, been enabled in the course of two years' business to realize and invest, in actual property, the sum of eighteen thousand pounds! Now, could that have been accomplished within the bills of mortality-as mercantile enterprize averages in that circuit in these days-by legitimate traffic? Could it have been done upon the principles of fair trading-of ordinary profit and convenient exchange? I am not quoting this because it furnishes a modern instance of unusual novelty and account, but because it is notorious in a locality in especial need of an example. Such cases are as common as blackberries-I mean such cases of profit-not of similar providence. On Tuesday, the 18th ult., Bath races began with five events, including the particular issue of the meeting. For the first of the series, Lamartine-10 to 1 against him, carrying Alfred Day, 8st. 7lbs.-beat Bordeaux-2 to 1 on him, carrying Frank Butler, 6st. 11lbs.-by three lengths in a canter. This was the Lansdowne Trial Stakes with a vengeance! The Somersetshire Handicap, of its 62 nominations, mustered a dozen at the post. As usual, the anticipations of this passage of skill in making a race pleasant were, for the most part, singularly fallacious. The winner was Chief Justice, 8st. 3lbs. by a couple of lengths-Young England second. The talents uitimately selected Hugo, 4st. 8lbs. ; perhaps they thought he was favourably weighted! The sports closed with a Sweepstakes, in heats, won by Clothworker, ridden by his owner --"industry must prosper." Wednesday offered an ample list, but the events were not of a character to come within the province of this review. The card, however, was not quite barren of points of noticeable interest. For example the weight put upon the two-year-olds for the Weston Stakes was 8st. 9lbs. for colts, and this in the month of May, when, according to the old style, they would have been but a few days out of the class of yearlings. Following suit, was the load awarded to a threeyear-old for the Aristocratic Handicap, for which Mr. Parr's Weathergage carried his master, who turned the scale at nine stone eight pounds! This was certainly no joke for the young one, though it fell into the convenience of the aristocratic avoirdupois, for your gentlefolks are very rarely "feathers." As the poet said of the geographical relations between Mantua and Cremona, so it fares with the chronological coincidence between Bath and Epsom-they are too near each other. For this reason, whatever the intrinsic excellence of the programme put forward at a meeting within a moderate amount of hours of the awful Derby, it would fail to command success. Epsom races, from their inauguration up to the middle of the nineteenth century, were at the head of the pleasure occasions dedicated to the rural recreation of the citizens of the British metropolis. How much longer they are destined to occupy that position will probably be sooner ascertained than so interesting a popular proposition may seem to promise at the moment. That the recent anniversary was divested of much of the peculiar character which won golden opinions" for its predecessors admits of no question. As we had begun to find it, but a few weeks before, at Newmarket, so we continued to experience it on the Downs of Surrey. From a practical national pastime, the turf has become a vast professional occupation: betting is now, to all intents and purposes, as completely and essentially a class business as "law, physic, and divinity." Tens of thousands openly announce themselves as dealers in the odds. Every city and town in the kingdom abounds with shops, exclusively devoted to such merchandize. During the winter of '51 '52, and the spring of the latter, the Derby was as absolutely an item of traffic as corn or coffee, sugar or salt, or any other necessary of life. The betting market-days are every Monday and Thursday throughout the year; and its fairs are those racing trysts whilom known under the designation of Meetings." The most important of these, in relation to the business of the capital, commenced on Tuesday, the 25th ult..... "O! rose of May, " Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine It sends some precious instance of itself which, therefore, we are bound to believe is not horse-racing of the new school; for surely never did the gentle month of ripe springtide come upon the scene with such "vinegar aspect." The "twenty-fifth ult.," as aforesaid, looked as if it had made up its mind to snow, and was only restrained by a natural shame; but its successor stood upon no such punctilio-the Derby Day of this season of grace was literally "winter thorough." It blew a bleak gale of wind from the eastward, and pelted with pitiless rain as if in sheer contradiction of the rule which anticipates wet from the west...... Well, the fair has begun. Nominally the affair is with certain small matters, such as The Craven Stakes, won by a filly called Butterfly; The Horton, ditto, won by Hare's-foot; The Heathcote Plate, won by Senorita; The Manor Plate, won by The Heriot; and last, but just the reverse of least in its interest, the twoyear-old race of the gathering-The Woodcote for this there was a baker's dozen at the post, whereof the worst in the odds and the best in the race was Orestes; the favourite was Dagobert, who finished a bad fourth. This was apparently-a monitory mem for the Harbinger division; but what business has theory "here-at such a time"? The prices averaged by the best goods were-say 5 to 2 against Hobbie Noble, and 4 to 1 Little Harry, nothing else in demand. "The Those who sought their couches on Tuesday evening at reasonable West End time, or 66 got up in the middle of the night," i.e., at 6 a.m., on Wednesday the 26th last past, in or about London, had a taste of as pretty a fall as the most aqueous of amphibii could desire. It didn't rain; it poured-and this it did, not coquettishly in showers, but in downright steadfast earnest, accompanied by a rattling north-easter, that sent every drop home to your skin, as if it had been a cambric needle. weather in Bloomsbury's year wasn't much to brag about," said Devil's Dough-and he wasn't born to be drowned" but this beats "illustrating the exigence of his instance in phrase unsuited to ears polite. Sawney pleaded for the skiey influences of this "land of brown heath," that it did not always rain-sometimes it snawed": thus, on our Derby day, when the torrent abated, there was a hearty Scotch mistof invaluable importance to the green crops. To say that the day in all its holiday conditions was a failure, after such a preface, would be a work of supererogation. The crowd of professional gentleman was of course in a concatenation with their calling-but ladies were infinitesimally few. The first race on the card was The Carew Stakes, a monstrously flat affair, won by Lady Blanche, beating half-a-dozen small deer, to which succeeded the eventful issue of the Spring turf. For the Derby of 1852 the nominations were 181, the runners-post varios casus-twenty-seven. The betting closed as follows-7 to 2 against Little Harry!......taken!...... 4 to 1 Hobbie Noble, 11 to 1 Harbinger, the same about Alcoran, 12 to 1 against Claverhouse, 14 to 1 Kingston, 16 to 1 Stockwell, 20 to 1 Alfred the Great, the same about Wormersley, 25 to 1 against Daniel O'Rourke (taken), the same about Joe Miller, King of Trumps, and Orelio, 30 to 1 Augur, and 40 to 1 against anything else...... The effort to get them off did not succeed till the third attempt....... "Sponte suâ properant : labor est inhibere volentes !" The early portion of " the play," as they call it in the stables, was made by the favourite, who led up the hill and over it, but not at a very distressing speed. Thus, in good compact order, they approached the fall for Tattenham Corner. The first feature in the race was that at the road Barbarian was leading, Hobbie and The Chief Baron Nicholson next in their order on the lower ground, and Daniel O'Rourke, well landed above them, the fourth. Thus-for the field "toiled after them in vain "this quartet came to the Stand, after passing which Butler sat down to his work, rushed to the front, and landed Daniel O'Rourke first by half a length, in the fashion of an accomplished artist, as he is. Barbarian was second, Chief Baron Nicholson third, a length from the second, and Hobbie Noble a head behind the third. These four were placed. The time was stated to be three minutes and two seconds.............. Perhaps the result in some sort waits upon my passing analysis of the pretensions of the market horses.... Bordeaux won the Epsom Town Plate, Ella The Great Exhibition ditto, and Arlette having picked up the Burgh Stakes, one of the least agreeable Derby days within my experience was happily brought to a close. Before the season closes I shall have some comment to offer upon its consequences. Thursday was the antipodes of sport, in any rendering of the term, and most especially chill and cheerless in the matter of its atmosphere. Let us, therefore, pass on to Friday-the Oaks Day-et præteria nihil. To the great filly stakes there were 123 nominations, and fourteen of them at the post. I will not occupy the reader's patience with any references to theory; the facts were these:-Latest betting-2 to 1 agst. Songstress, 4 to 1 Trousseau, 6 to 1 Red Hind, 8 to 1 Gossamer, 12 to 1 Sally, 15 to 1 Bird-on-the-Wing, and 20 to 1 Lady Amyott. Attack and Bay Rosalind were scratched at 40 minutes past one. At a quarter past three o'clock-and much time wasted, I know not on what discretion, by Red Hind-the party got away, leaving her behind after all. When they had succeeded in climbing the hill, Gossamer began the race, and, having led for a-while, was passed by Bird-on-the-Wing. At the road, Songstress closed this pair of leaders, beat them in due routine as they passed the Stand, and finally won with ease by a length. The Bird was second, Gossamer a couple of lengths astern of her, and Kate an indifferent fourth. Thus, in effect, finished one of the least successful anniversaries of Epsom races within my memory. "The Goodnatured Man," perhaps, had he been there, would have accounted for this satisfactorily; but Douglas Jerrold tells us his species has become extinct. For myself, I saw in it only a part of that whole which the turn given to racing by the traders in it is precipitating for the fortunes of the turf. LETTERS FROM MY UNCLE SCRIBBLE. MY DEAR NEPHEW, You will not be surprised at receiving some lines of counsel and advice from an old man-not so much an old man as an old sportsman -a sportsman not of these degenerate days, when pace is the grand criterion of practice; and though I am an old-fashioned fellow, and keep my hands in my breeches' pockets, it is not so graceless a custom as putting them into your neighbours'. I write to you because, amongst all the elegancies and refinements of a modern education, I see no professorship established for instruction in the honesty and manliness of a country gentleman's position in life. On the one hand, it dwindles into mere horse-and-hound insignificance; on the other, into the fine gentlemanism of the hard-riding turfite, or the unblushing effrontery of the professional leg. Nor do I think these remarks will be thrown away upon you, at a time when you must stand highly in need of them: when the whole of that mighty Babylon teems with rascality, presented in such alluring forms, that the most wary are daily entrapped; and that instinctive love for the chase and its accompanying interests is too often absorbed in some betting-list speculation. The very company ought to keep you out of it. Dog stealers, tailors' apprentices, lawyers' clerks, out-of-place grooms, and public defaulters, are all anxious to get on their sovereigns, and here they can do it with very little chance of detection, and still less of being paid. You are just entering upon life—I should say upon a new phase of it. Your pap and petticoats, apples and gingerbread, breeches' pockets and penknives, have passed away you have had the measles and scarlet fever, and are now merging into the full bloom of collars and cricket. You are shortly to become a member of an university, where you will meet with doctors learned in every science modern and ancient, but who will none of them teach you how to lead the life of an English gentleman upon fifteen hundred a-year; how to distinguish between a sportsman and a sporting man, a bull bait and a battue, a prize fight and a fox-chase; and it remains for your old uncle to do it. You enter life, young gentleman, under very favourable circumstances. You are a gentleman, I mean in the fullest sense of the word; for you not only have a good fortune in prospect, a good education (at least so they call all the Latin and Greek you have swallowed at Eton), a gentlemanly appearance and address, but you never had an ancestor who has ever contributed by head or hand to the benefit of himself or his country. The Scribbles are as old and useless a race, to do them justice, as the most aristocratic of our friends can desire. The only exceptions to this glorious rule are perhaps one gentleman in the reign of one of the early Edwards, a freebooter in "black mail," who enriched us by constantly levying the same on his neighbours; and a highly respectable member of the family in the reign of the good Queen Anne, who escaped F F hanging as a highwayman (very properly because he was a Scribble), for abduction and robbery-the jewels he very honourably returned, and the young lady he as honourably married, seeing she had a large fortune in her own right. Under these circumstances it would be exceedingly undignified in you to work for your living. As your uncle I beg to tell you so; and even if your fortune should be insufficient for your necessary expenses, I would only ask what tradesmen were meant for? I know that there is a foolish prejudice against being done up, and really no gentleman ever need come to so definite a conclusion of his career. Common prudence amongst the committee-men, an unostentatious liberality towards the Tories or Radicals, will always command a seat in Parliament; and at all events there is the Derby, St. Leger, or Chester Cup, to fall back upon. I should like to steer you clear of these possible contingencies, but I cannot help mentioning them as perfectly compatible with the respectability of many who began life in your own position. I trust these letters will not fall into other hands than those they are meant for. There are thousands who may read them with much advantage they are addressed to a young gentleman entering upon a not uncommon career. There is a highly respectable lady, an authoress, a Miss Geraldine E. Jewsbury, who is evidently a woman of much observation, who writes as follows:-"The working classes are great dog-fanciers-bulldogs, terriers, and others of a curious mongrel breed, are sources of great delight to them." The working classes! the upper classes of our public schools surely-I should hardly have known them by that name; but the attributes are so strangely in keeping with their tastes, that it would be folly to doubt the lady's meaning. Oh these women! how much more they know than we give them credit for! And you, my dear boy, have only just ceased to belong to these working classes, to go into some still harder working classes at Oxbridge. How well this lady, in a few simple words, has hit off your entry; what an infusion of young blood into the kennel of the Scribble family, which only wants direction in the right road. I see you now, as well as if I had this lady's talent, or had myself been with you, running out of school after second lesson, or still better on Sunday, after the afternoon chapel, taking your way to some old woman's back parlour (old Mother Somebody), where in the summer season a gooseberry tart, cream, tea, and sugar, and a sturdy bulldog, or Scotch terrier, or smooth black and tan, Snap, Fly, Jet, Twig, are impatiently awaiting their master. Here Snap is treated to a rat; or, being Sunday, a luxury is provided in the shape of a cat-a prime tortoiseshell. Should these not be forthcoming, Fly, Jet, or Twig is entered at one of the little fellows. To be sure the little fellow shrieks, and if very much alarmed calls you a "bully "—but what are little fellows intended for? If you were as fast as some of my acquaintances, a little cockfighting varies the diversion; and a set-to every evening with the gloves finishes the recreations of an embryo sportsman. Admirable infusion of new blood into the kennel of the Scribbles! but it wants direction, shape (into the latter it should be licked). You know this has been your beginning-it sounds not too well, to ears politeand yet such beginnings make masters of foxhounds, members of Par liament, layers of odds, raisers of churches, honourable gentlemen, |