Velocipede out of Lady Geraldine; a performance he repeated with a brother of the same animal for the next race, a Sweepstakes of 20 sovs. each for two-year-olds. The First Class of the Wokinghams Wallflower won, beating eleven others, by a head; and the Three-hundred Sovereigns, the gift of the Great Western Railway Company, Thistledown won, defeating a field of nine by a length. The Second Class of the Wokinghams brought out seven, and Woodlark was an easy winner by a length. The Duke of Rutland's Virago colt then carried off the Borough Members' Plate; when up went the hat, and the fight was over. more brilliant meeting there may have been on the Royal Heath, but rarely, if ever, a more sporting one. The arrangements were very good, but class A contains only one-and that a first-rate-which hails as "The Dorling."...... A Hampton Races are to the legitimate turfite what the race for the Derby at Astley's is to the bipes impemis generally. "Jimmy Ducks" indeed Mr. Widdicombe's double is lost to the Hurst, which, perad. venture, could have better spared a better man, if such there be of the kind. Rum old Moulsey, however, has been remodelled. A Marquis and a Baronet figured as stewards, and a regular Newmarket official as "arbiter elegantiarum." During the two days there was heat enough to satisfy a salamander. The reader is spared details. affairs may be put on another footing "Rings now are made on Moulsey Hurst:" when it comes to business we shall give a fitting professional return. Sutton Park Race come within the category "provincial" more especially than many of their contemporaries not included in the élite of the Calendar. The management is provincial, neither judge nor starter belonging to the Newmarket service. The meeting took place on Tuesday, the 18th ult., and following day, and gratified the rural thousands that visited it with good sport and plenty of it. The whole was hearty and Old English; and may the spirit which moved its merry company animate our "country's pride" till the crack of doom. Beverley, Hull, and East Riding Races fell on Wednesday and Thursday, the 19th and 20th ult. It was a revival of a two years' growth, and as such gave promise of a goodly harvest. There were ten races, including heats on the first day, and seven ditto on the second. These, perhaps, call for no mention, beyond the fact-a most accountable one in my estimation-that the fields furnished the names of animals in a great measure new to racing lists. They proved the existence of an extensive breed of thorough blood-stock, and that the English horse is an object of honourable emulation with the English yeoman. Surely here is a step in the right direction. Farmers are foes to free trade; let them at least act upon one item in the catalogue, and keep up our unrivalled breed of horses. Too many of our peerless stallions have been suffered to go into exile. A taste for racing is a wholesome alterative for this carelessness. While utilitarianism is promoting its " exhibitions," surely sporting may do a little good-after its own fashion. ENGRAVED BY J. B. HUNT, FROM A PAINTING BY E. CORBET. "All right! By gemini, here they come at last! the grey horse in trouble all along, and the filly a-running away from 'em both at every stride. Won't she 'come' for the Stake' a trifle after this!" If this is the age of anything, it is the age of touts of gentlemen who supply the sporting public with the best possible information at the lowest possible price. The hand of time, however, has altered the race quite as much as it has changed the kind of customer for whom the knowing one now employs his abilities. Formerly he sidled up to you on some unexpected occasion, and, in voice telling of night air and early purl, whispered in proper Delphic terms the result of his observation and experience: "You warn't to be agen the Markis this time for any consideration whatsomever-sich a trial was never knowed, and sich a mare," with a peculiar twist of the arms, and a "make-believe" of striking out "and sich a mare never seen in Newmarket afore." Or again, "Would you put a pound or two on for him this time? for it's nought but making money to back the Quveen;" or, "If so be, sir, you'd like to make the hit and have done with it, get on the Decoy colt while he's at long odds for the Derby; and the more you stans, the more you wins." This was the varmint, swipey, overgrown head-lad, or out-at elbows leg, who really knew and enjoyed the look of a race-horse when he saw one; who had always something still of a heart for sport, no matter how he lived; and who was ever as game as our friend has depicted him, to sit out a night or two for the chance of a spin at early dawn. But how he has changed within the last few months! How he has dropped that husky whisper and mysterious air that seemed so well to become his profession! How he has abandoned all that secrecy which we would have thought to be the very soul of his trade! and how he does "come out" now, to be sure! See how the papers swarm with his advertisements, and mark how he glories in his name and occupation! Now he is "Nimrod," "Sam Rogers," and "Pegasus;" then "George Dockeray," " Vates," "Judex," and everybody or anybody you choose, who has earned a name as a judge or a jockey-That is, he may be addressed, with a Post-office order inclosed, in this wise, up to Chester, we will say, when of course he adds "Mounseer" to his titles, with which he may live on to the Derby or Ascot, by when we may find him as "Voltigeur" or "The Flying Dutchman," RIGHT AGAIN! 66 There is no surmising or mere indefinite hinting about him. For half-a-crown-prepaid, of course, to prevent mistakes-he will place you the first, second, and third for the Leger, and give you in the winners of the Derby of 1853 and '54 to a certainty, each now being at something over four hundred to one. He is always right, of which he thinks it a duty he owes to the public to tell you the week after the meeting, when he names you in his advertisement the winner of every race, from the trial stake to the beaten handicap, as he had named them to his friends and patrons some weeks before-at an annual subscription of ten shillings, payable in advance to Pegasus Davis, Esq., Post-office, Charing-cross. He is in constant communication with all the great stables, has letters of advice every other morning from John Scott, and dines regularly on a Sunday with William Edwards, after having seen the horses out. He attends every meeting of importance, though it is necessary to carry out his plans that he should not be personally known to you, and writes direct, with the latest intelligence, from the scene of action-his letters, at times, being unfortunately liable to miscarry; but that is a fault of the Post-office, which he will take care to mention to his friend the noble Lord at the head of that department at the first opportunity. He is a member of Tattersall's, as he deems it hardly necessary to tell you. He is consulted in every trial that is run, and concerned in every robbery that is attempted-or would be, if so permitted. In fact, he knows everybody and every move, having seareely, perhaps, seen a race-horse in his life, or not knowing one if he did; gains all his particulars from a "Turf Guide" he borrows at the pot-house where he spends his evenings; exists in a back court somewhere out of Oxford street, and surprises you for four or five Sunday mornings by having actually paid beforehand, of course, to prevent mistakes" for another advertisement in Bell's Life. This is the novus homo-the authority of the present swarm of sportsmen (!) who subscribe to betting lists, and whose rank and fame is best known by that invariable stipulation in all their agreements “to pay beforehand to prevent mistakes." This string of advertisements, week after week, declares how far the force of folly may be carried, and how much a noble sport may be ridiculed and abused. To portray such a character would hardly suit our book; indeed, like the fortuneteller at Vauxhall, or the invisible girl, his great success depends on his not being too well known. We must so fall back on one of the old sort, who, with all his backslidings, still knows how to address any one as is “a real gentleman sportsman," and to point off his oration with a good slang story, if he can't exactly impress you with the worth of what he contrived so well to witness. There you have him! beautifully planted for getting the length of Mr. Merry's Chester Cup lot. Old Chanticleer, you see, has had enough of it already; while Miss Anne's pulling the boy's arms off to get "She must be very near winning," as he tells you " and so she would too," as he tells you after, "if they hadn't from them. away before; ridden her head off in the race "It don't go to contradict, though, what I said; do it, sir? And now about the Goodwood Stake, sir; there's that there horse of—” [The conclusion of the honourable gentleman's remarks were |