a 300 gs. Cup was "the sum-tottel" of his winnings. tested races, winnings and losings balanced each other.

In his ten con

In spite of the utilitarianism of the age, sport, on the whole, flourishes well in England. Cricket had a great season in '52; and though its admirers have had a furious battle of kites and crows, during the winter, over the body of Clark, the bowler, and pelted each with missiles, in Bell, with an energy worthy of ancient divines, it is to be hoped that their warmth on the great subject of slow bowling will have subsided before they resume their flannel dresses again. Yachting, also, is likely to show no symptoms of decay; but much as we may have "loved thee, Ocean,' we must say that to hear the perpetual drippings of stereotyped nautical slang, which fall from the lips of some junior sucking-Nelsons, as they lie on their stomachs for the good of their country, with a telescope at their eye, and make their languid observations on 66 crafts," is one of the most wearisome penances that Dame Nature can inflict on a man.

Private coursing, owing to the recent enactment about hares, is, perhaps, more in vogue than ever; but there is hardly so much spirit in public coursing as there was. It is not in such high hands, as a general thing; and we look with fond regret to the days when Rivers, Craven, and Orford, were living names in the annals of the leash, and when Lord Eglinton challenged all the Ashdown Club with his fawn-and-white Waterloo, and beat them. A Graham's glories also seem to have departed with his old white steed, who, faithful to the last, broke his binding in his death agony, and staggered into the next stall to die with his head close to Greenwich Time;" and the grave has but just closed, for ever, over one of the best of the Manchester coursers. In no period of coursing, however, has any animal retained its powers unimpaired like Cerito; and we may wait till Mr. A. Bennett's great great grandchildren are tryers before we find an animal that can win a Waterloo Cup three out of four successive years.

Wet weather has sadly spoilt fox-hunting; but we hear that foxes were never more plentiful. No less than thirteen broke away in sight of the field, from one of Sir Richard Sutton's favourite coverts last December. Let us hope that none of them will get into a certain cage near one of the stations of a certain railway, where, so rumour has it, they are regularly whipped round and round of a morning, to keep them in good wind for the bag-days. The porters of the said railway tell a good story concerning their foxship's lord and master. Not very many months since he was setting out one morning in scarlet attire, and had comfortably stowed himself in a first-class carriage-that "clever coverhack" of modern days. Alas, for his fancied repose! A wind scent was felt, and a regular "chevy-chace" was heard on the platform, and in the twinkling of an eye the red rogue, which was specially purchased for the day's sport, and had been thrust in a basket into one of the dog-holes, was seen to rush wildly down the platform with its chain, and the whole pack of porters, inspectors, and guards, in full ery, at its heels. Some kind soul headed it back before it reached the station door opening into the metropolis; and we believe that it finally earthed among waste paper under a newspaper stall, where it yapped like a fiend at the astonished

flying stationer. "Is this your fox ** ****?" said a porter,

approaching the aforesaid carriage; but the rapid jerking up of the

window was the only reply, and a very wise one too, under the circumstances. We hope the master of hounds in question will take care to keep a good breed in his cage. A great deal has been said of the English breed being lost; but we certainly saw the finest "seventeenhand dog-fox" dug out of a drain this year that had ever crossed our path in life. The terrier seized him by the ear as he bolted, and the gallant brace rolled over and over each other, in a riding, in mortal combat, till the pack rushed in and broke him up.

Poor Ebenezer Elliot felt his political economy cut to the quick when he saw in a local paper that about one hundred and twenty packs are advertised weekly in Bell; and we met lately with a blank-verse poem upon physiology, which proved to demonstration that every hunter in the United Kingdom cruelly struck away the subsistence from two peasants. Some alarmists predict ruin to the noble science from farming improvements; whereas, on the contrary, we look on the consequent fence-stubbing as likely to have the very happiest effect. As long as farmers can breed young horses, and have "head, hands, and heels" themselves, or sons with those requisites, to show them off in the across-country hunter-market, we shall not find the farmers emulating the dubious fame of their brother of Dodford Holt.

Steeplechasing has, like Mr. Krook, pursued so many crooked ways, that it is no wonder that it is suffering from a species of spontaneous combustion at last. It has had two distinct phases of prosperity-one in 1836 and 1837 under the weight-for-age system, and the other in 1848 and 1849 under the handicap one; but since then it has declined so much, that for the first few months of 1852 and 1853 it seemed to have been snuffed out altogether. Mr. Topham-however, gave it a timely shove at Liverpool; and the last two miles between Peter Simple and Miss Mowbray, at Doncaster, was worthy of the sport in its very palmiest days. Although the line of country is a very peculiar one, yet during the six years that the sport has been in existence on the banks of the Don the contests between Father Mathew and Dubious, Rachel and Lucy Neale, Sir Peter Laurie and Miss Mowbray, as well as the abovenamed, have been of a character to bring every true sportsman's heart into his mouth. Peter Simple is quite an old-fashioned hunter, and as clear and steady a jumper (British Yeoman not excepted) as we ever saw. His legs have considerably thickened since '49, but he is very nearly as fast as he ever was. Still though, we think, it is one of the finest sights under the sun to see Tom Oliver, who seems to bear a charmed life, take his old horse by the head, and cram him, with that fearless shoulder-shrug of his, at a " stiff-un," we look fondly back to the days when Mr. Osbaldeston was wont to kill a fox with his morning and afternoon pack, and was open to ride any man four miles across Leicestershire for 1,000 guineas a side-when Moonraker and Grimaldi proudly eyed each other as they joined the fluttering crowd of silk jackets which sallied forth for the battle from under the archway of The Bell at St. Albans when Cigar, Greyling, Peter Simple and Isaac, used to keep up the hereditary prestige of Fitzjames's "gallant grey"-when Vyvian showed his rat-tail and his little-whiskered captain's back, at 12st. 7lbs., to the best horses of the age-when Lottery bungled at his water-jumps, and "took timber like an angel," or, as "The Squire "would paraphrase it, "like that old beggar of mine, Clasher"

and when "the Marquis" went many a yard out of his way to jump an extra gate or two on Columbine, Yellow Dwarf, or Cock Robin. We may dwell rather fondly over the past in this matter, but we assuredly do not do so as regards racing. We should as soon think of comparing the quality of the sport at our leading meetings now with what it was seventy years ago, as we should compare the speed of the electric wires which run up to the Doncaster and York grand stands with the Voyage of the pigeon, which Taurosthenes, with a keen perception of the value of the 66 very earliest intelligence," trained and sent from Elis to Ægina, to inform his father that he had stood A 1 among the wrestlers at the Olympic games; or the phaeton on which Earl Jersey has set his seal, with the lumbering affair in which Sir Philip Neil sat when, in A.D. 1672, his jerkin-ned grooms publicly slaked the thirst of his four mares with Rhenish wine, and fed them with cheesecakes in the Hyde Park "Ring." Those who are informed about the past will not dwell with any despondency on the present. Men will be weak and erring "from July to eternity;" and we can expect nothing to go on in this world without considerable alloy. We have plenty of very sharp practice, and often something worse, on the part of men whose position in society entitles them to race a little more for sport and not so completely for money. The handicap system, that very life-blood of racing, gets sadly abused, but these deeds are comparatively venial by the side of the darker scenes enacted or planned by gentle hands in the muchvaunted olden time. Robberies were much "deaderer" then; and the cotton cap, if we mistake not, was at times drawn over the faces of the "tempted," on the top of Cambridge or Bury St. Edmunds jails, while the indirect tempters snored cozily after their senatorial labours, or enjoyed their cocoa and Morning Post not a thousand miles from "The Corner." Many very much better educated but very much worse men then Dan Dawson died in their beds.

To our minds, until the railways and electric telegraphs came into action the sport of racing was never thoroughly nationalized. It was the amusement of a rich few, who could afford to pay for the mail or posters; and the "world and his wife" had no part or lot in the matter, except at their particular county town. Happily the railways have for ever smashed up all such feudalism and exclusiveness, and racing is now in verity what our Sailor King termed it, "the national sport of a great and free people." The great improvement at meetings generally, in point of sport, is still more owing to them. We can now hardly realize the thought of meeting a string of thirteen sheeted racers between Catterick and Greta Bridge (amongst whom Muley Moloch, little dreaming of the Alice Hawthorn who was to spring from his loins, walked fourth), all toiling on a seventy-mile journey, to some meeting in the far North. What lumps of condition they must have lost on the road! We then had the great slapping Harkaway, emulous of Elis, bowling along in his four-horse van on some of those mysterious journeys which generally ended in a "scratch" and a threatened horsepond for the late Mr. Ferguson. Those were days, too, when weighing-clerks were so drowsy that it is a positive fact that one of the favourites was wilfully ridden no less than 8lbs. over weight in the St. Leger! and scarcely a soul knew it, or if they did, they "didn't care to let out.' As regards bipeds, too, I must say from my heart that I know no sight so pleasant as to see the

Yorkshiremen (Southrons used to go more from habit than choice; but they are taking "uncommon kindly" to it now) pouring down towards the course at Doncaster and York, as each special train empties its merry broad-tongued burden. I never see so many happy faces together, without pondering over the thoughtless bigotry of the puritans, who would forcibly try to prevent them from letting off their extra stock of animal spirits at so cheap a rate. A glance at our motto will show that the great moralist of the last century was not on their side. In old times the majority of them had to walk all night from the countless hives of industry which dot the surface of the West Riding, or not come at all. Many of them did walk; but it was often worse than a weary way, and they lost many a day's wages thereby. One of the "hardware youths," who had got to the course in Voltigeur's year, and taken up a position opposite the winning post by 10 o'clock in the morning, with his dinner in his pocket-handkerchief, and stood there as immoveable as one of Wellington's squares at Waterloo till all was over, best expressed to us the true English love of horse-racing. We asked him how he could like to stand there for eight mortal hours! "I can work like a lion all t' yere, was his reply, "if I can nobbut see t'osses run for t' Leger. I kam here every yere since I was t' lad, and I'll come till I die. I canna walk so weel now, so I come in train. Ah, man! it's a grand thing, they bring yer for next to nought." When even the smoke of dismal-faced Sheffield cannot quench this love, we can hardly wonder that it is transplanted wherever the Englishman sets his foot; and that General Gilbert rides finishes as brilliantly in India as ever he did on The Tiger or Vision at home-that a course is roped out on the barren rock of Gibraltar, where there is little else to be seen but ocean, guns, and monkeys; and that a Jockey Club has sprung up in Australia. We certainly thought the Drapers' Hornbush Club rules rather quaint; but who knows that in time the ladies at the Antipodes may raise an Edward Topham or a Richard Johnson to put them in the way wherein they should go o? But a truce to mere enthusiastic generalities for the Next month I shall deal with stern realities; and (D.V.) when the Northamptonshire Stakes, the Metropolitan Stakes, and the Two Thousand Guineas are put on the stage, may I be there to see! March 22nd.

season.

JOE MILLER,

WINNER OF THE CHESTER AND ASCOT CUPS, 1852.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY HARRY HALL..

BY CASTOR.

Joe Miller, bred by Mr. Sadler in 1849, was got by Venison out of Witticism, by Sultan Junior, her dam Victoria, by Tramp-Bella, by Beninborough.

Venison, by Partisan out of Fawn, by Smolensko, was deservedly famous both as a stud and a race-horse. He was himself a very stout