EPITOME OF THE ST. LEGER. Betting as to Winner. Year. Owner and Winner. Mr. Clifton's Ninety-three ..... Mr. Wilson's Champion ....... Pedigree of Winner. John Shepherd Pedigree of Winner, Ridden by W. Scott Betting is to Winner. 7 to 4 aget. 8 to 1 agst. 7 to 2 agst, 3 to 1 agst. Charles XII. won after a dead heat with Mr. Thornhill's Euclid; and Voltigeur after one with Mr Mangan's Russborough. Champion, Surplice, The Flying Dutchman, and Voltigeur, also won the Derby; and Queen of Trumps the Oaks. The Doncaster St. Leger commenced as a Sweepstakes of 25 gs. each, p. p., for three years old; colts 8st., fillies 7st. 121b. In 1790 the weights were altered, colts carrying 8st. 21b., and fillies 8st. ; in 1826 they were further increased to 8st. 61b. for colts and 8st. 31b. for fillies : and in 1839 again changed, 8st. 71b. for colts and 8st. 2lb. for fillies, at which standard they remain at present. In 1832 the stake became one of 50 sovs. each, half forfeit, of which, in 1835, the second horse received a hundred, and in 1843 two hundred, while the third was allowed his stake. In 1846 an increase in these allowances was made-the second receiving 300 sovs, and the third 100 sovs. Last year, however (1851), the stake was reduced again to 25 sovs., p.p., the second receiving 100 sovs. The race was first run on a Wednesday, vice Tuesday in 1845. Up to 1825 the course was 1 mile 6 furlongs and 193 yards. In this year, however, considerable difficulty was found in starting the horses—the LETTERS FROM MY UNCLE SCRIBBLE. MY DEAR NEPHEW, I must return to the subject of my former letter. Surely young gentlemen, met together for purposes of sport, should be above a suspicion of dishonesty. I know from experience that gentlemen—that is, gentlemen by position and birth-think all fair where horseflesh is concerned; but Oxbridge men ought to have a higher standard of honesty. Besides, your age should at least be a guarantee for straightforward dealing. You have not yet acquired that polish, by rubbing against the knaves of society, which knocks off, or smooths down the roughnesses of liberality, generosity, and candour. You have not had time to be done yourselves, so you have no claim for consideration in doing others. Besides this, there are reasons of policy which ought to prevent any approach to the legitimate looseness of turf principles in a place like Oxbridge. You have the character of a sportsman in your own hands. If the authorities—those refrigerators of hot blood_find gambling and rascality to be the invariable accompaniments of horseflesh, what do you suppose will become of the legitimate occupations of the sportsman ? Nature makes every man, with the proper use of his limbs, a lover of the chase, more or less ; but it is art, and a very bad and degraded principle of art, which makes him a Leg. Upon my word, after what I have seen of the rising generation, I am not surprised at the fears of tender mothers or hard-hearted fathers, when they find their scarcelyfledged offspring in possession of any thing faster than a Suffolk Punch. First comes a gentlemanly boy, with an ordinary idea of public school honour : it forbids him to do a shabby trick, even by a schoolmaster, or to leave an old apple-woman with an unpaid chalk. In a month or two he has, what his friends call, a hack ; but which, in his hands, is made to jump a hurdle, and becomes a hunter. The hunter proves to be fastish, and leathers and purple and white stripes are very becoming. A steeple-chase for the pewter is a not unfrequent consequence. I think this would be better left alone : but in another summer à soupçon of whisker, a visit to the metropolis, a lucky hit with a thorough-bred screw, and the remarkably interesting conversation of a fast man at the Corner, who can barely spell his own name, though it is of one syllable-sees the young gentleman in the pig-skin at something over nine stone. Then come by slow but certain steps all the worst features of the ring. Betting-list houses ; paid touts who know nothing; and stable-boys of bad character, who know just so much as to make them more fatal than the touts. Scratchings of horses at wrong times ; commission betting ; shifts, stratagems, blackguardism : until the great sin of being detected gets our juvenile hero a horsewhipping from some aristocratic bully who, four years ago, was not fit to clean the boy's boots for honesty, and is now at least 50 per cent. worse than himself. Now this is not a very uncommon career with a young gentleman who begins nibbling at nobbling in his Oxbridge career : and if men who have been passively done, will actively do, certainly Oxbridge is not the place for the practice. If hunting fosters such practices as these in our Universities, I do not wonder at Athenian beilows-blowers trying to put a stop to it. What sympathy can they have with it? If these are the fruits of the tree, I wouldn't leave the roots in the ground. “ Audi alteram partem.” I do not believe that hunting has anything to do with the vice. I believe it would be a very salutary remedy. When I was at Oxbridge (never mind how long ago-it doesn't require the memory of the oldest inhabitant), for every horse which goes out of that city now, winter or summer, there then went forty. There were as many scarlet coats and pairs of leather breeches as there are now dirty shirts and straight-cut collars ; and I think a more honourable, straightforward set of fellows than the Oxbridge undergraduates were not to be met with. I am no indiscriminate “ Laudator temporis acti,” but I contend that the very immunity from those ridiculous penalties for driving a phaeton, or going a “buster" (you youngsters are too fond of slang) for five-and-twenty minutes from White Cross Green, gave a good healthy tone, not only to the complexion, but to the heart. Do you think at twenty I'd have robbed the fellow I pulled out of Waterperry Brook; or substituted some thoroughbred impostor under a false name, or false conditions, for what was entered as my bona fide property-only to do my old schoolfellow, who knocked me out of a bullfinch a month before, in a clipping burst from Middleton Park ? The dons, or the commission, or whoever has had any hand in it, has done a very gross piece of folly, in putting a stop to legitimate sport in Oxbridge and Camford. Under proper regulations and conditions, it always was winked at, and kind advice given, and parental authority called in where a young gentleman had fallen too much in love with the sylvan goddess, and wanted to marry her outright, without anything to support her. I think they would have found their account in going on with this system. Young gentlemen are considered responsible for their own actions in other professions at your time of life: I don't see why you and your companions should be bigger fools than the rest of the world. If these places are schools, or convents, or only seminaries for the most serious calling of life, make them so—I've no objection. But while they remain open to the idler and the man of independence, and the fellows take two-thirds more money from them than from the professed slow-coach, I think the idlers have a right to their consideration. Now, my dear boy, don't mistake me. I do not expect that that fat rosy-gilled old buffer of a tutor, to whom you introduced me, and who cares for nothing but eating and drinking, should come to you and say, "My dear Mr. Scribble, I feel that foxhunting is the only thing worth living for : shut up that very disgusting book which, by its abominable Greek character, will inevitably spoil your eyes. I know you have a sufficient income, and will have a very much larger one, with a good living in your gift : do as you like here-only don't break the chapel windows : go out hunting as often as you please : never mind hall or chapel ; and if you could oblige me by generally wearing your pink in quad, or riding your horse to his stables through Peckwater, it gives the college such a lively appearance—it would be really conferring a great |