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"A hound and a hawk no longer

Shall be symptoms of disaffection;

A cock-fight shall cease to be breach of the peace,
And a horse-race an insurrection."

SONG OF THE CAVALIERS.

"I am a friend, sir, to public amusements; for they keep people from vice.”— DR. JOHNSON TO SIR ADAM FERGUSON.

Poor Joe Rayner, the "Joe Muggins's Dog" of the day, and our own "Goldfinch," has gone to his rest in Camberwell Church-yard, since we last wrote. If there ever was a thorough-bred sportsman, it was he; and if Fortune had let him "run into money," no one would have been more keen to keep horses or have run his horses straighter. When the rapidly increasing tumour in his throat warned him that he could not be here much longer, he grasped his stick, and sallied calmly forth like a hero, to bid all his old sporting friends "Good-bye!" It was his habit, which he had continued for a series of years, to come for The Sportsman to our office; but he seldom arrived till the 15th of the month. Owing to some little whim, that was his publishing day. It fell, we think, on a Saturday last month, and he appeared as usual; and after glancing at the pictures and a few words of chat about Rifleman's defeat, he added, quite cheerfully, "This is the last SPORTSMAN I shall come for. Ijust give myself eight days, and then it will be all over:" and so saying, he went round and shook hands with everyone in the office at the time, and bade them "Good-bye!" as cheerfully as if he was merely going a journey that he had long looked forward to. He was very much shrunk and wasted; but, in spite of his warning, we hardly thought the end was so near. By that day week he had taken to his bed for the last time, and in two days more he died, thus fulfilling his sad prophecy to the letter. He had written for The Sportsman ever since its commencement, and the deeds of great cracks, all of the olden or the present time, was his favourite theme. To our minds, the best article from his pen, of late years, was a description of Tattersall's and its members, and no man was more "down" to all The Corner dodges. The last article he wrote for us was one in the February number, upon the betting men of the past, more especially those of the Yorkshire school-Michael Brunton, &c., including a short memoir of the late Joe Rogers. His heart was in that county; he loved it

for "its racing tastes, its glorious hams, and its hospitable hearts," and for its old recollections of Tate Wilkinson, when that acute Northern Elliston led the theatrical circuit, and descried the earliest dawning of each new star on the York boards. From the Drurylane Fund he drew £100 a-year, which kept him above want, and he retained his fondness of theatres, especially for the Adelphi, whose manager was especially kind to him, and liked to hear him "hold forth on racing and the drama. The remembrance of his "Tyke," "Zekiel," "Homespun," "Fixture," and four or five other characters, will always be green spots in the memory of the lovers of the footlights; he looked the theatrical veteran to the last, and used at times to treat his friends to staves from his old songs. We remember seeing him seated at Tom Dawson's Blue Bonnet party, at Doncaster, between Caunt (who had been driving a pony tandem with the American Giant that day) and the Newmarket starter, and trolling a lay amidst great applause. Latterly that duty has devolved on Mr. Dailey, of Carlisle, who is the Incledon of the Turf, though far the greatest in Irish songs. Joe was always fond of writing a little poetry on his own account; but he did not know his real power, as it sadly lacked the force of his prose. He never sent us an article without a little poetical heading of his own, which was evidently the joy of his heart; in fact, he had plenty of humour and grotesque thought in prose, but he grew stilted and halting in rhyme, and had no ear for measure. Greater men, however, than he have failed to get their own length in literature exactly. We knew an Oxford first-class man, of whom all his examiners averred that his Greek form was not within 10lbs. of his Latin one; but still nothing could persuade him that the latter was the best. There was another, too, equally great in both languages, who thought poetry was his forte, and nice trash he wrote about "music murmuring in the shell," &c. The ruling passion of song was still strong on Joe in death, and he dropped exhausted back on his pillow in the middle of the 30th line or so of a poetical farewell, in which nearly all his best friends were mentioned. He was a nice quiet-mannered man, and very popular with trainers and other racing men, on whom he never thrust himself, like too many, in his anxiety to get information; he was contented to drop in here and there on his friends from different districts, and pick it up quietly. The last time we spoke to him was in the paddock on the Derby Day; he was all for Wild Dayrell, and right vigorously did he enforce his glowing sentiments, as was his wont, by thumping his stick on the ground. Beeswing was, we should say, his idol, and his racing recollections extended back as far as 1802, and the days of Haphazard. Few could draw a better line when great horses were concerned, but in the way of betting he did very little, and the last time he appeared in print, in this capacity, was when he pulled up a rascally "lister" to the Police Office, who had refused to pay him a bet on, we think, Muscovite, for the Cesarewitch. He did not write for papers often, and seemed indifferent as to regular employment; in fact, he only wrote when the "spirit moved him" to dilate on some great horse or mare, or to playfully hit off the characteristics of some prominent "nob" or groundling among turfites, and he shed ink in good earnest accordingly. During the last two years we had noted his "fine

Roman hand" in The Field and The Racing Times, and we think he had made some engagement to write an article or two for some Racing Indicator or Telegraph shortly before he died. We do not think that he had been North since West Australian's year, and confined himself latterly to the meetings just about London.

Robert Hill, of Voltigeur fame, also rests with many another jockey and turfite, in a church-yard near Northallerton. Since he left Lord Zetland's service on a small pension in 1851, he has not, we believe, trained a single horse. Occasionally he appeared at the principal race-courses in Yorkshire, and we remember him assuring us when he watched Augur winning his first race at York, that he was "a rank bad-legged one," and would throw all his backers over. His excitement and devotion all during Voltigeur's three-year-old era was something alarming, and he was ready to knock down anyone who disputed his powers. Putting in a cow to air his box at Doncaster, and carrying his own water and hay and corn, were the securities taken to secure the great brown's health for the week, and Bobby would willingly have undertaken to drive a cow from Richmond, with his own fair hands, and carry the above provisions by instalments on his back thither, rather than that his favourite should lack anything. When he took his last gallop he put the lad on his pony, and steered Radulphus himself. Away he went, standing up in his stirrups, with a certain part very prominent, his coat tails flying in the air, and his gelding's tail shaking in unison like a pump handle, while "Job" on the crack strode steadily after him once round, Bobby working heel and hand at his steed to keep out of his way. After this exercise, he worked himself up into the idea that he would be almost enabled to drink his favourite's health in champagne, when he had passed the post, and still have time to get to the rails to see the rest come in. The dead heat, therefore, was a sad shock to him, and he growled deeply when the ironical crowd told him to take away his horse and "put a little brandy in his water." As they ran the dead heat, he got in close to the judge, and hopped with all the wild elasticity of a sturgeon's snout when he at last saw "Volti" draw a length a-head, and he fairly fell on his neck and kissed him when he reached him. This grand mistake with Lightfoot must be accounted for by his infatuated fondness for Voltigeur, and thus he was unable to see that Lightfoot's rough gallops with him were really worth very little, from a lack of belief that his favourite could ever lose his running. He was only 53 when he died, and he was thus unable to see the stock of his favourite horse tested on the Turf. There are not a few of them in the Yorkshire, and Lord Zetland owns four of his yearlings, to wit, Vidette, Demivolte, Skirmisher, and Sharpshooter; so, what with Fandango, Hospodar, and his four three-year-olds, he will be pretty full next

year.

Mr. Watt, of Beverley, has also gone; but he had been dead to the Tarf for some time, and since the failure of Tordesillas, about whom he was rather unjust on Charles Marson, and the death of his wife, he had sadly lost his interest in everything, and he was no longer seen in his favourite dress of the olden time-blue coat with gilt buttons and buff waistcoat-on a Yorkshire or Newmarket race

course: he took to his dressing-gown, and hardly wandered out of the limits of his house and grounds. From 1813 to 1833, his career was one "blaze of triumph." His purchase of Mr. Hewett's stud in 1812 was a great hit: almost as great a one as Sir Charles Turner made, when he bought Overton, Hambletonian, and Beningborough in one lot, for only 3,000 gs.! His racing blood, spread as it has been by Tramp, Blacklock, Liverpool, Brutandorf, Belzoni, and Lottery, quite rank him among Stud Fathers. He loved Blacklock and his high-bred mate Altisidora quite as dearly as ever Lord Westminster loved Touchstone, or Mr. Popham, Wild Dayrell, and with strange inconsistency he valued Belshazzar far beyond his deserts. The Cup and St. Leger with Rockingham was a grand Doncaster finale to the career of a man, who had won four St. Legers and all the good things of Yorkshire; and Cara's One Thousand Guineas, in 1839, which George Edwards won for him, in order, as he said, "to get his wedding expenses," was the only slice of real luck for "the harlequin" afterwards.

Lord Sefton inherited but little of his father's love for the Turf, that old sportsman and patron of Harry Edwards's, in the days of Mouché, Bobadilla, Morrisdancer, Souvenir, Juryman, and Captain Arthur, who was once so well known as he rode on Newmarket Heath, with his daughters, the best horsewomen of the day, at his side. The late earl's especial sphere was the coachbox and the coursing field. We have often stopped to watch him drive his phaeton down Knightsbridge, and admire the masterly style in which he held his horses together, so different to the muffs of the present day, who really far from realize even the first part of the stanza

"What can little Johnny do?

He can drive a phaeton-and-two-
Can little Johnny do no more?
He can drive a phaeton-and-four."

He once gave the good people of Liverpool, with whom he was wonderfully popular, a specimen of his handling powers this way, when he drove up and down the landing stage for steamers on the pier, and he was as fond of a dark chestnut team as Sir Henry Peyton was of his greys. It was fine to see him drive up in that phaeton to the Hill House on the second morning of the Waterloo Meeting, and we shall never forget the hearty cheers when his own dog Sackcloth won the 1854 Cup there against Larriston, whose owner, Mr. Henderson, died only a month before his victor of that day. Sackcloth's sire, Senate, won the same Cup for him seven years before; but of all his S's., Skirmisher was the one which disappointed him most. It was only last May that we saw him at Tattersall's examining a dun cob, and he seemed apparently well then; but a great change had come over him when we saw him for the last time at Ascot on the Cup day, quietly looking over Fandango and Rataplan, as they were walked about and saddled at the top of the hill.

And so we conjured up the memories of the sportsmen who have died this year, as we strolled down the long beechen avenue road which leads from the "Four Mile Stables" to the Newmarket toll

bar. Poor Harry Bell may thank Providence, and the energy with which his regimental surgeon drew off the laudanum with the stomachpump, when he lustily invoked his assistance, that he is not among them. He was on the Heath on the Cambridgeshire day; and I hear that he is, or will probably be, bought out of his regiment by some old Foig-a-Ballagh friends. He has never prospered since the end of the 1845 season, when, if rumour be true, he said-in the plenitude of his Foig-a-Ballagh and Refraction triumphs-that he would not ride second to Jim Robinson for the Bedford stable. As a steeplechase and hurdle-race rider, he was exceedingly pronising, and it is to be hoped he will get into strong work in this line.

I was too much out of form to get to the Heath on the Cambridgeshire Day, and I did not miss much. Sultan is, I am told, a "pretty, light, corky, wiry little animal"; but his dashing owner (who looks at least thirty years younger than he really is) little expected to get back his £1,000 purchase money, plus £400, after his Cesarewitch failure. There was no touching the chesnut and "The Vicar" in Ireland this spring; but his first owner only won £737 with him in stakes. Harry Broome, who often picks out a winner, drew, I believe, £80, at 40 to 1 against him for this last race. No one would claim the light little Sauve qui Peut after his three mile race, which produced as great a spread-eagle as ever. One lad, who was flogging in about 150 yards in the rear of the winner, was saluted with ironical comments from his pedestrian brother " Aztecs" of "Ugh! go it butcher!" This race is a sort of carnival for the "feathers,' but the ex-feathers look on their efforts with no great favour; and one of them then and there expressed himself to the effect that the whole lot were "just a set of bloody dolls," accompanying this handsome eulogy with a gesture of disgust, which made a lasting impression on my informant. Sauve qui Peut seemed all right again on Thursday; and considering what a middling lot (Porto Rico included) they are, Mr. Stanley's luck has been very considerable this year. Orinoco, who won him £4,015 in sixteen out of thirty-nine starts, has long since been buried in the stomachs of the Cambridgeshire Hounds, who ought to race like fiends this autumn on such dainty fare. After his good service in trying and racing, he at least deserved bruteburial near the spot where he fell. If he had lived, he was not a dear horse at 800 guineas, as he improved with age; and who would have dreamed that he could have finished sixth in a very strong-run Cesarewitch! He was a bit of a rogue, and in eight of his races he only "squeezed" through by a head. The resolution of Mr. Lawley, to keep" Mr. Sykes" under Joe Dawson's care, instead of taking him to Fyfield, is said to have dissolved the half sort of confederacy which latterly existed between that gentleman and Mr. Stanley. The former owns Corcbus, and must have made a very handsome nest-egg for his future turf investments out of the Eglinton stud and his £500 lease of Mr. Sykes. Some of the losers raised a howl at Job Marson, and made out that the absolutely terrific rush with which he brought Mr. Sykes in that finest race of the season, the Great Warwick Handicap, was made too late. How bystanders can put up their opinions so confidently, and pretend to know better than such a faultless finisher as Job as to exactly

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