have been in those old days the passion for equestrian distinction, it was left for later times to display, to perfection, the full powers of the race-horse. The want of stirrups alone must have been a terrible want. With the well-caparisoned war-horse, or the highly-finished cheval d'école, even in his gallopade, capriole, or balotade, the rider may sit down upon his twist, and secure himself in his saddle by the clip which his thighs and knees will afford him; but there is none of that (obstando) resisting power about his seat which enables him to contend with the race-horse in his gallop. We admit that a very slight comparison can be drawn between the race-horse of ancient and that of modern days; but whoever has seen the print of the celebrated jockey, John Oakley, on Eclipse-the only man, by the way, who could ride him well-will be convinced that, without the fulcrum of stirrups, he could not have ridden him at all; as, from the style in which he ran, his nose almost sweeping the ground, he would very soon have been pulled from the saddle over his head.

Cowper says, in bitter satire

"We justly boast

At least superior jockeyship, and claim
The honours of the turf as all our own!'

The abuses of the turf we abhor, and shall in part expose; let it
not, however, be forgotten that, had we no racing, we should not
be in possession of the noblest animal in the creation-the
thorough-bred horse. Remember, too, that poor human nature
cannot exist without some sort of recreation; even the rigid
Cato says,
'the
man who has no time to be idle is a slave.' In-
closures, and gradual refinement of manners, have already con-
tracted the circle of rural sports for which England has been so
celebrated; and we confess we are sorry for this, for we certainly
give many of them the preference over racing. Hawking has dis-
appeared; shooting has lost the wild, sportsmanlike character
of earlier days; and hare-hunting has fallen into disrepute. Fox-
hunting, no doubt, stands its ground, but fears are entertained
even for the king of sports. Fox-hunting suspends the cares of life,
whilst the speculations of the race-course too generally increase
them. The one steels the constitution, whilst the anxious cares
of the other have a contrary effect. The love of the chase may be
said to be screwed into the soul of man by the noble hand of
Pindar, indeed, is inscribed to the latter sovereign, in which mention is made of his
horse Phrenicus, on which he was the winner of the Olympic crown. Considerable
obscurity, however, hangs over most of the details of the Olympic turf, and par-
ticularly as regards the classing of the riders, and the weights the horses carried. It
is generally supposed these points were left to the discretion of the judges, who were
sworn to do justice; and here we have a faint resemblance to the modern handicap.

nature,

nature, whereas the pursuit of the other is too often the offspring of a passion we should wish to disown. The one enlarges those sympathies which unite us in a bond of reciprocal kindness and good offices; in the pursuit of the other, almost every man we meet is our foe. The one is a pastime-the other a game, and a hazardous one too, and often played at fearful odds. Lastly, the chase does not usually bring any man into bad company: the modern turf is fast becoming the very manor of the worst. All this we admit; but still we are not for abandoning a thing only for evils not necessarily mixed up with it.

Having seen the English turf reach its acmé, we should be sorry to witness its decline; but fall it must, if a tighter hand be not held over the whole system appertaining to it. Noblemen and

gentlemen of fortune and integrity must rouse themselves from an apathy to which they appear lately to have been lulled; and they must separate themselves from a set of marked, unprincipled miscreants, who are endeavouring to elbow them off the ground which ought exclusively to be their own. No honourable man

can be successful, for any length of time, against such a horde of determined depredators as have lately been seen on our racecourses; the most princely fortune cannot sustain itself against the deep-laid stratagems of such villanous combinations.

Perhaps it may not be necessary to enter into the very accidence of racing; but on the authority of Mr. Strutt, On the Sports and Pastimes of England,' something like it was set agoing in Athelstane's reign. Several race-horses,' says he,' were sent by Hugh Capet, in the ninth century, as a present to Athelstane, when he was soliciting the hand of Ethelswitha, his sister.' A more distinct indication of a sport of this kind occurs in a description of London, written by William Fitz-Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II. He informs us that horses were usually exposed to sale in Smithfield, and in order to prove the excellency of hackneys and charging horses, they were usually matched against each other. Indeed, the monk gives a very animated description of the start and finish of a horse-race. In John's reign, running horses are frequently mentioned in the register of royal expenditure. John was a renowned sportsman-he needed a redeeming quality -but it does not appear that he made use of his running horses otherwise than in the sports of the field. Edwards II., III., and IV. were likewise breeders of horses, as also Henry VIII., who imported some from the east; but the running horses of those days are not to be associated with the turf; at least we have reason to believe the term generally applies to light and speedy ani mals, used in racing perhaps occasionally, but chiefly in other active pursuits, and in contradistinction to the war-horse, then required

to

༔

to be most powerful, to carry a man cased in armour, and never
weighing less than twenty stone. In fact, the invention of gun-
powder did much towards refining the native breed of the English
horse; and we begin to recognise the symptoms of a scientific
turf in many of the satirical writings of the days of Elizabeth.
Take for instance Bishop Hall's lines in 1597:-
" ແ Dost thou prize

Thy brute-beasts' worth by their dam's qualities?
Sayst thou thy colt shall prove a swift-paced steed;
Only because a jennet did him breed?

Or, sayst thou this same horse shall win the prize,
Because his dam was swiftest Tranchefice ?""

It is quite evident, indeed, that racing was in considerable vogue during this reign, although it does not appear to have been much patronised by the queen, otherwise it would, we may be sure, have fornied a part of the pastimes at Kenilworth. The famous George Earl of Cumberland was one of the victims of the turf in those early days.

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In the reign of James I., private matches between gentlemen, then their own jockeys, became very common in England; and the first public race meetings appear at Garterley, in Yorkshire, Croydon, in Surrey, and Theobalds, on Enfield Chase, the prize being a golden bell. The art of training also may now be said to have commenced; strict attention was paid to the food and exercise of the horses, but the effect of weight was not taken into consideration, ten stone being generally, we have reason to believe, both the maximum and minimum of what the horses carried. James patronized racing; he gave 500l. a vast price in those days for an Arabian, which, according to the Duke of Newcastle, was of little value, having been beaten easily by our native horses. Prince Henry had a strong attachment to racing as well as hunting, but he was cut off at an early age. Charles I. was well inclined towards such sports, and excelled in horsemanship, but the distractions of his reign prevented his following these peaceful pastimes. According to Boucher, however, in his Survey of the Town of Stamford, the first valuable public prize was run for at that place in Charles I.'s time, viz. a silver and gilt cup and cover, of the estimated value of eight pounds, provided by the care of the aldermen for the time being; and Sir Edward Harwood laments the scarcity of able horses in the kingdom, not more than two thousand being to be found equal to the like number of French horses; for which he blames principally racing* In 1640, races *In were held at Newmarket:-also in Hyde Park, as appears from * Some time after this the Duke of Buckingham's Helmsley Turk, and the Moroceb Barb, were brought to England, and greatly improved the native breed. a comedy

a comedy called the Merry Beggars, or Jovial Crew, 1641.Shall we make a fling to London, and see how the spring appears there in Spring Gardens, and in Hyde Park, to see the races, horse and foot?

The wily Cromwell was not altogether indifferent to the breed of running-horses, and with one of the stallions in his stud-Place's White Turk-do the oldest of our pedigrees end. He had also a famous brood-mare, called the Coffin-Mare, from the circumstance of her being concealed in a vault during the search for his effects at the time of the Restoration. Mr. Place, stud-groom to Cromwell, was a conspicuous character of those days; and, according to some, the White Turk was his individual property. Charles II. was a great patron of the race-course. He frequently honoured this pastime with his presence, and appointed races to be run in Datchet Mead, as also at Newmarket, where his horses were entered in his own name, and where he rebuilt the decayed palace of his grandfather James I. He also visited other places at which races were instituted-Burford Downs, in particular(since known as Bibury race-course, so often frequented by George IV. when Regent)-as witness the doggrel of old Baskerville :

Next, for the glory of the place,

Here has been rode many a race.

King Charles the Second I saw here;
But I've forgotten in what year.
The Duke of Monmouth here also

Made his horse to sweat and blow, &c.'

At this time it appears that prizes run for became more valuable than they formerly had been. Amongst them were bowls, and various other pieces of plate, usually estimated at the value of one hundred guineas; and from the inscriptions on these trophies of victory, much interesting information might be obtained. This facetious monarch was likewise a breeder of race-horses, having imported mares from Barbary, and other parts, selected by his Master of the Horse, sent abroad for the purpose, and called Royal Mares-appearing as such in the stud-book to this day. One of these mares was the dam of Dodsworth, bred by the king, and said to be the earliest race-horse we have on record, whose pedigree can be properly authenticated.

James II. was a horseman, but was not long enough among his people to enable them to judge of his sentiments and inclinations respecting the pleasures of the turf. When he retired to France, however, he devoted himself to hunting, and had several first-rate English horses always in his stud. William III. and his queen were also patrons of racing; not only continuing the

bounty

bounty of their predecessors, but adding several plates to the former donations. Queen Anne's consort, Prince George of Denmark, kept a fine stud, and the Curwen Bay Barb, and the celebrated Darley Arabian, appeared in this reign. The queen also added several plates. George I. was no racer, but he discontinued silver plate as prizes, and instituted the King's Plates, as they have been since termed, being one hundred guineas, paid in cash. George II. cared as little for racing as his father, but to encourage the breed of horses, as well as to suppress low gambling, he made some good regulations for the suppression of pony races, and running for any sum under 50l. In his reign the Godolphin Arabian appeared, the founder of our best blood-the property of the then Earl of Godolphin.* George III., though not much a lover of the turf, gave it some encouragement as a national pastime; in the fourth year of his reign, however, Eclipse was foaled, and from that period may English racing be dated!

George IV. outstripped all his royal predecessors on the turf, in the ardour of his pursuit of it, and the magnificence of his racing establishment. Indeed, the epithet delighting in horses,'applied by Pindar to Hiero,-might be applied to him, for no man could have been fonder of them than he was, and his judgment in everything relating to them was considered excellent. He was the breeder of several first-rate race-horses, amongst which was Whiskey, the sire of Eleanor, the only winner of the Derby and Oaks great stakes, &c. &c. Our present gracious monarch— bred upon another element-has no taste for this sport; but continued it for a short time after his brother's death to run out his engagements, and also with a view of not throwing a damp over a pastime of such high interest to his subjects. It was at one time given out, that his Majesty had consented to keep his horses in training, provided he did not lose more than 4000l. per annum by them, but such has not been the case. A royal stud, however, still exists at Hampton Court, and the following celebrated horses and mares are now there,-namely, an Arab, given to George IV. by (cheu!) the late Sir John Malcolm; the Colonel, Waterloo, Tranby, and Ranter, as stallions; Maria, Posthuma, Fleur-de-Lis, besides several other mares, some with foals to his own horses, and some to Sultan, Æmilius, Camel, Priam, and others, the best

*The reigns of King William, Queen Anne, and George I. and II., are remarkable in the annals of the turf, as having been the days of the noted Tregonwell Frampton, Esq., a gentleman of family and fortune in the West of England, Master of the Horse during all the above-mentioned reigns; who had a house at Newmarket; was a heavy better, and, if not belied, a great rogue. The horrible charge against him, however, respecting his qualifying his horse, Dragon, for the race, by a violent outrage upon humanity, and alluded to by Dr. Hawksworth in the 'Elysium of Beasts,' is sup posed to be unfounded.

horses