equipped and armed, in the direction of the scene of action; and should this force not be effective, it was arranged that one of the small field-pieces, with a suitable detachment of artillery, should be sent out against the belligerent quadruped, who, poor devil! was entirely in the dark as to what had provoked such uncalled-for treatment against him.

It had now ceased to be a party of sport: it was becoming one of duty. Commanding officers actually entered the hyena's proceedings in the orderly-book, and orders were issued for a general turn out in case the present detachment did not succeed in putting a stop to the "laughing" of the facetious foe.

The application of "cold steel" had excited the temperament of the hyena in no slight degree; and as soon as he disencumbered himself from it, he charged every one that came across his path, but luckily very harmlessly, as is generally and almost unaccountably the case in a conflict between man and beast: whether it is from man's greater agility and presence of mind, I know not; but I have seen a person actually extricate himself from the gripe of a tiger and the proboscis of an elephant, when in appearance no earthly power could save them.

It was just at this juncture that the additional force arrived: the rocks were covered with the blood of the hyena, which was at first mistaken for that of their wounded comrades, and in revenge for which fierce was the onslaught on the imagined destroyer. A stray bullet, at last, out of some forty that riddled the striped skin of the common enemy, pierced a vital part, and the hyena fell covered with wounds, if not with glory. This was a great feat accomplished in the ideas of the French, who returned with the remaining portion of the defunct animal to camp, from whence "Johnny" issued on the morrow to wage war with a more crafty, if not a more dangerous foe.

LEATHERLUNGS THE "LEG."

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAP. IX.

THE TWO NATIONS.

"'Tis meet

That noble minds keep ever with their likes:
For who so firm that cannot be seduced?"

SHAKSPEARE.

"Guilt and Shame, says the allegory, were at first companions; and in the begin ning of their journey inseparably kept together. But their union was soon found to be disagreeable to both: Guilt gave Shame frequent uneasiness, and Shame often betrayed the secret conspiracies of Guilt. After long disagreement, therefore, they at length consented to part for ever. Guilt boldly walked forward alone to overtake

Fate, that went before in the shape of an executioner; but Shame, being naturally timorous, returned back to keep company with Virtue, which in the beginning of their journey they had left behind."

GOLDSMITH.

The act of going on the turf, like that of going under it, levels all distinctions: in the ring, as in the grave, all men are equal. Even when but one solitary pace from eternity, the consciousness of class has been known indignantly to vindicate itself, and a highwayman on the gallows has turned up his nose at being turned off in company with a chimney-sweep. In the betting circles only is there no precedence; no pretence of state or station; no assumption that virtue is more honourable than vice, or riches more worthy than rags. Only get them together at Tattersall's, and you shall see the Pope of Rome take the enemy of mankind by the hand; the archbishop of-anywhere-canvassing the propriety of the odds with the arch-fiend. The convenience of this reduction of the social gradients we shall find dealt with as we go on in the mean while, as regards the economy of the turf in high places, "surgit amari aliquid?" Let us examine. The racing republic is ruled over, I was going to say, by a popular assembly called the Jockey Club. Whether popular or unpopular, however, that self-elected and selected society has, for a series of years, been permitted to direct the destinies of the turf, and to enjoy a reign of singular tranquillity and success. Now and then a reformer-such as citizen Thornton-would start up, and give it a knock on the pate, as east-enders will do; but on the whole, no " tide in the affairs of men" has flowed more calmly-to say nothing of its having "led on to fortune" some of its pilots. That such has been the case-not to speak it profanely, or in a mischievous spirit-they would be hardy who should seek to gainsay. "Where's the palace, -asks Shakspeare-"whereunto foul things sometimes intrude not?" Not that of St. Stephens-that we should write it!—as recent experience has taught us.

And this brings us at once into straight running with the rules and regulations of the Jockey Club; not those enacted for the government of others, but applied by that body to their own practice. Probably, without exception, its members are in the habit of laying wagers on horse-races: without any invidious allusion, gentlemen known to be heavy betters round have filled the office of stewards; that is to say, have had votes in that council of three, by which, in effect, all questions brought before the Club are disposed of. A few weeks since, an ex-chancellor thus spoke in the great legislative assembly of the nation :-Members of parliament ought to know that if a man were interested directly or indirectly in any railway or private bill, he ought not to vote at all, either in committee or out. It was of the utmost importance that no member should vote on a bill with which he was in the slightest way concerned; and he hoped that this rule was adopted elsewhere!" Could the noble and learned lord have had the usage of the Jockey Club "in his mind's eye?" The fact that members of the legislature have taken money ❝ directly or indirectly" to facilitate the objects of those who gave it has

been lately established beyond even an attempt at denial: the possibility that members of the turf could (always supposing that they have not done it already) do so, must be the first reform in the constitution of that sport. We will not stay to debate whether the Jockey Club be or be not "all honourable men :" as at backgammon, so in the games of life, a blot is not a blot till it is hit. But it is an anomaly, to use the politest form of speech, in the practice of a civilized community, alike inconvenient as inconsistent, for a man to unite in himself the offices of judge and juror in any case, to say nothing of one having reference to his breeches' pocket. For my own poor part, I think the existing movement in racing reform, excellent as it is, very much resembles the existing attempt, praiseworthy as the design must be admitted to be, to remedy the rotten foundations of Westminster Bridge, by removing the rubbish from its highway. This will very likely be pronounced twaddle by the party that supports the good old times; but it is in keeping with the philosophy, the morals and mathematics of Young England for all that.

The two nations of the turf are, to borrow a phrase from cricket, "The Gentlemen and Players;" as at cricket, so in racing, the former employing the latter to endeavour to beat them. As regards the miscellaneous people, however, the Gentlemen and Players are the active body; the mere public the passive: the former the doers; the latter the done. According to the letter and the spirit of turf law and practice as they stand, the owner of a race-horse backed for an event can win if he likes the speculator may win, in the prodigality of the proprietors' bowels. Horses are scratched at the eleventh hour (one was thus served for a great event not long ago, at twenty minutes past eleven the day before he should have run and probably won) without remorse or ruth. The monster machine of gullibility is assuredly the system of betting on horse-races known as "play or pay." There never was such a system conceived out of Bedlam. Has the reader ever canvassed it; examined the arguments in its favour; or has he any idea what they are?

Foremost, as most ad captandum, is urged the facility thus afforded subscribers to races to hedge to their stakes. By this contrivance the public become the underwriters of sporting gentlemen's ventures; with this handsome per-centage against them, that the insured may cast away his craft if it should so suit or please him, without prejudice to his policy. The merchants' and the turfites' cases are, in effect, the same-morally and physically. The commercial gentleman insures a cargo he knows to be worth nothing, for a large amount; contrives that the ship freighted with his rubbish shall go to the bottom, and the crew to the nearest port, or the devil, as it may fall out; steps down to Lloyd's, and receives the sums for which his vessel was underwritten. The sporting gentleman lays against a brute that he knows to be worth nothing, but which, by proper management in the market, has been got well up in the odds, and is backed by the public (the gaming underwriter of those who make mankind their quarry), contrives that his animal shall be amiss (perhaps hammers his shins a little), strolls down to Tattersalls on the "settling" day,

and pockets the odds of the takers, about his horse. The only dif ference is in the name by which society has thought fit to distinguish these operations. The merchant's goes by a vulgar appellationswindling, or may be something worse: the sportsman's is called genteelly" hedging."

Unless bets were p.p.-say the advocates of the plan there would be no betting at all; that is, the business of the ring would stand still; its occupation would be gone without the means-to be used on any emergency-of making the public "safe." Racing is not a game of chance; but it is required by the play-or-pay system that its jeopardies should out-Herod anything ever dreamt of in the philosophy of the hellite or thimble-and-pea man. Sit down to the hazard-table, and at all events you may shake your elbow and rattle the bones. Take a shy at the thimble-rig, and at least you catch a glimpse of the evanescent pea, whatever becomes of it when you turn the thimble under which it ought to be. But back a favourite for a great stake, and you are utterly without assurance that it will ever run for that event or any other; that you will ever lay your eyes upon it; that it will be alive at the time when its engagement is to come off; that it was alive at the time you backed it; that it ever was alive; that it ever was born!....

Now, sweet reader, don't dash the unoffending periodical to the ground: don't think we-I-the historian of these plain facts, would insult your common sense: there can be no doubt of your deserving our esteemed consideration, the more that you cannot believe such things be. But we are strangers; and peradventure you would have proof of that which is here set down. If in town (or should you be in the country, it may be accomplished by a letter post-paid, with a stamp enclosed, I dare say), apply to the Messrs. Weatherby, at No. 6, Old Burlington-street: they receive all nominations and stakes and forfeits, and so forth, for the turf. But to make it more simple, you shall use the Derby of 1847. Ask of them the number of colts and fillies named for that event; and whether they have the slightest idea -beyond receiving the names of their nominators; their own names if they have any or otherwise; those of their sires and dams--that one animal, so entered to run at Epsom in the year 1847, did ever see the light; was ever actually in rerum naturâ? Propound this question, I say, and then settle with yourself-and favour me with your opinion, if in the mood-what sort of a thing P.P. betting would be considered in the abstract by any sane man of your acquaintance not to the matter born or bred; and the economy of the turf in general?

How salutary and seasonable to common sense are the warnings given by our police-magistrates to retail shopkeepers, not to place their wares so as completely to reverse the supplication-" lead us not into temptation!" People who hang fathoms of sausages so that they dangle, as it were, into the mouths of the passers-by, should be held as accomplices, before the fact, of hungry beggars that steal them. But even here is a case far less flagrant than the usage of the turf, where those who deal in its goods not only offer them to the reach of any one who will lay hold of them, but solicit and countenance

the presence of such beggars of spirit as soar above asking an alms. Your "leg" begins business without any capital-the genteel way of speaking of beggary. This is not said offensively; indeed, just the reverse, for whenever my friend Leatherlungs alludes to his opening shop, he thrusts his arms up to the shoulders in the pockets of his unspeakables, and, smiling in suchwise as the Saracen's Head on Snow Hill might be supposed to do, under the influence of the cholic, informs you he did it "with four-penn'orth of winkles that he got upon tick." Of course I don't mean to convey that the ring is all "legs;" but they constitute its principal members; and thus, this people having gone forth to seek some spot of shelter and supply, find them in the centre of a land flowing with milk and honey, where the only thing they have to do to eat, drink, and be merry, is to help themselves.

The conditions of horse-racing, as regards its fundamental arrangements, are precisely such as they were three-quarters of a century ago. In '76 there were six nominations in the St. Leger; for '46 there are one hundred and fifty-three: the same system of management being applied to both. In '76, it is more than probable, somebody knew something of the animals engaged; in '46, it would probably discomfit the bench and the bar of the United Kingdom to identify one whose birth, parentage, and education it might be convenient to surround with obscurity. Last year Westminster Hall was for days in labour before it brought forth the real Running Rein; and able as the Solicitor-General proved himself at obstetrics, it might have been a still more difficult case had not the patient-that is, the defendant-ministered to himself, and thus saved the Court of Exchequer any further pains.

Thus anarchial and anomalous is the state of that government under which we find our two nations of the turf living. One wishes its policy were in a more healthy category; one naturally prefers order to confusion of any kind; but it was scarcely with a designcertainly not with a hope to reform it-that these things were set down; but simply to account for the existence here and elsewhere of such personages as those from whose class I have selected my hero. I cannot doubt-for "time works wonders," we are told by the dramatist and our own experience-I say I cannot doubt but that the day will come when this biography, trifling and perchance unworthy as it may now appear, will be referred to with some curiosity, some morbid relish, for the story of a race of citizens of so remark. able a sort as the legs of the nineteenth century. "Use lessens marvel," Scott assures us; and for this cause we--at least some of usmingle continually with a species which posterity shall regard as apocryphal, without wonder-many with complacency. At all events, they are a race full of character: one don't pledge oneself to its precise description. The most consummate courtier, suppled by half a century's etiquette, never possessed more exquisite exemption from mauvaise honte than a shoe-boy, a foot-boy, or a pot-boy, after a season's run of the ring. And who shall wonder at it? Once admitted as a recognized member of that magic circle, and his droits de seigneur are without limit and beyond question. He is no longer