7 to 2, Lady Wildair at 11 to 2, and the winner at 20 to 1, the party having put their money and their trust on Miss Elis, whose price was 8 to 1. One-and-twenty came to the post, and got away from it without mischance. Hope, attended by Refraction, led up the hill; Lady Wildair, Lancashire Witch, Longitude, Glee, and Miss Sarah next them, and the rest well up, for the pace was indifferent. In making the turn at Tattenham Corner the pace was better, and the appearance of the field worse: Hope still was in front, but the "crack" was gone, and in her place was Miss Sarah, Lady Wildair looking also very well. The two first began to run together at the road, and had it between them to the distance, where Refraction challenged, beat them both before reaching the stand, and won easily by two lengths. Hope was second, with Lady Sarah a length behind her. The speed all through was below the general average; the first mile, in fact, was bad. It will be seen that Miss Elis, being beaten by Refraction, proved that Kent's trials must have been good for nothing-trials are the most deceitful touchstones applicable to the turf. I could tell a dozen that have come off since the race, showing how oddly animals run sometimes in public and sometimes in private. Fickle Wild Rose beat Lancashire Witch, in their places for the Oaks, hollow; Fickle was subsequently tried, and proved to be a brute that couldn't run on equal terms with a good donkey, and she had been tried, to be very good, with Sorella!...... The results of the meeting show that its popularity is on the wane; and who can wonder that people at length grow disgusted with the rule of robbery now common to its two great races? "Is there any remedy for it?" shall haply be asked. "A specific," is my answer. Do not bait the trap, and the vermin will not come near it. Offer a premium for the attendance of thieves at race-courses, and do you wonder that they come in handsome force? And is not such a premium offered when the son of a noble places himself in a position to lose his hundreds and his thousands to a son of a ? ASCOT RACES. The royal meeting has been put right royally upon the scene of late years. Last season was a gorgeous anniversary; the present was scarcely less brilliant. All the world was in town, and nineteentwentieths of it went to Ascot. It was a worthy successor of the Bal poudré, where fashion held its revels in the full dress of our great grand-parents: to my thinking, their great grand-daughters in demi-toilette formed a far more interesting tableau-all to nothing a more natural one. The weather was delicious, and the sport more than abundant. The court was, as usual, at Windsor, with a princely circle, the principal guests being the Duke and Duchess de Nemours. The royal party honoured the course with its presence on Tuesday and Thursday, and, it is needless to say, received a cordial and a loyal welcome. Her Majesty appeared to be interested with the scene, and looked remarkably well; his royal highness Prince Albert, unfortunately, does not seem to care for racing. It is not lawful here to speak of the bright particular stars which shone in the galaxy of the courtly train, or we could tell of those that would, by comparison, turn to gorgons the vaunted beauties of the Hampton Gallery. The details of the course are every year undergoing improvement; the only fear indeed is, that by-and-by they will be too complete. A season or so back, the press loaded the authorities with thanks for provision made for the convenience of its members. They had no such obligation forced on their gratitude in the present-they were left to shift generally for themselves, all save the representative of the morning papers, poor fellow! whom I saw, with unaffected compassion, working at his onerous duties in a dismal cell, as dark and not as roomy as a comfortable coffin. Tuesday, the 10th ult., was the auspicious commencement of this auspicious meeting. The company was numerous, and of excellent caste; and soon after one the approach of the court was announced. They arrived in the customary procession, the only novel feature-at least, to my observation-being the magnificent character of the horses; the royal stud has greatly improved since it fell under the management of Lord Jersey. The royal stand was surmounted by an ornamental awning as on former occasions, while for the first time a large space in front of it was railed in. There the horses saddled previous to each race, and the privileged few were permitted to view them it is proper to say this privilege was accorded to the representatives of the press. The amount of racing during the four days was positively prodigious, and any attempt even to epitomize it in a work of this kind would occupy a space that could not be spared. The race for the Trial Stakes (the prologue of the meeting) The Libel won in a canter, the distance a mile. People said this proved he was poisoned for the Derby: I was not so convinced. For the Ascot Derby (Swinley Course) Wood Pigeon beat Idas, and so he did for the Epsom Derby; yet people backed Idas at odds on him, but Idas also was made safe! Awful fields of horses ran for the first and second classes of the Ascot Stakes; and Weatherbit beat Old England, besides many another, for the Welcome Stakes; and the Cobweb colt won £400 by a Sweepstakes; and Sweetmeat carried off the Gold Vase-for neither Alice nor Foig came out for it, after all the backing they found favour for in the market. Wednesday was brimful of sport, and only escaped being a bumper in the matter of attendance. The only regular visitors that were absent were the card retailers-they could get no merchandise to sell. Why are there monopolies of anything? Two or three of the great coaching houses of lang syne send individuals of their firms as directors into the chief railway boards in London; consequently Messrs. Chaplin and Horne, for example, enjoy the bus monopoly of the South Western, for instance. Now, as full buses pay, and halffilled only remunerate, one bus attends to carry all the passengers from a train west, and one east. Now, as the average of persons wanting such conveyance may be from fifty to a hundred, it is obvious they cannot all get into one bus, notwithstanding it be licensed to carry eleven in and ten out, in a space that would accommodate about a dozen. But the bus is filled, and the bus director-proprietor is paid, and the public goes to the wall, and so it does in every existing case of monopoly. Why are there monopolies of anything? The Royal Hunt Cup was the feature of the day. It brought a whole wilderness of horses, thirty in amount, to the post, and was won by Evenus, the biggest of the lot-as big, indeed, as two or three of some of them together. The distance, the straight mile, was the length and sort of course for the winner. Cowl won the Great Ascot Produce Stakes, with some thousand pounds or thereabouts-the last return it seemed probable he would ever make his owner from racing funds, as he broke down very badly in his race for the Cup. Thursday, the highest holiday of our turf, was just the weather for such an occasion. Long before noon London poured forth its multitudes-mobs in purple and fine linen; for the road the wisefor the rail the foolish. By steam did ourself make our descent this season. Catch us at it another. The Great Western advertised that trains would start every quarter of an hour up to noon, or near upon it. From ten to nearly half-past eleven no train was dispatched, during which time the doors were kept closed: for what purpose but to give a turn to the pick-pockets is difficult to surmise. Hundreds of delicate women were, during the whole of that time, exposed to all manner of annoyance and offensive fellowship. The sun poured upon them like liquid fire, while, haply, some sporting gent from "over the water" was blowing his cloud under their noses, or an out and out butcher from Whitechapel was pouring his opinion of things in general into their ears. Without exception, so unseemly a position. I never saw English ladies placed in, as those who were waiting on the Cup day to be conveyed to Slough by the eleven o'clock train of the Great Western Railway. One has no right to complain of what followed at the Slough station. Those who had sent on conveyances were, of course, provided for: those who had not, paid for their improvidence as the unwise always do. As an episode of no very uncommon occurrence, I may here relate that I saw eight-and-twenty pounds drawn from an omnibus party, which was certainly more than the value of the whole set-out-good work for one day! The gathering on the ground was immense: the equipages perhaps were less numerous; but the people were innumerable. At the hour prescribed soon after one-the royal cortège entered the course, and, with a most animating reception, passed up it. As usual, the cavalcade was a gorgeous one, the sole drawback being the costume of the gentlemen of the court, who always appear at Ascot in the Windsor livery; that is to say-uniform-a terrible twopenny postman array -blue coats with beef-steak collars and cuffs. The Duke de Nemours having shaved off the insignia of Young France - by stress of the Bal costumé, and Prince George of Cambridge having assumed the fashion of Old England, following the rules of residence at Windsor Castle, it sorely puzzled us at first to make out who this Pylades and Orestes in full beef-steaks might be: we can only plead in mitigation that gentlemen are known by their habits. Of the events which preceded the Cup, the most accountable was the New Stakes, which brought out two-and-twenty two-year-olds, and a dashing lot they were. The winner, a colt of Lord Lonsdale's, by Bay Middleton, out of Jubilee, is not in the Derby. The second, Forth's Sting, that ought to have won, I think, is, and ought to be backed for his engagement. The Emperor of Russia's splendid annuity-a £500 piece of plate-out of twenty-six nominations, brought to the post but four-Foig-a-Ballagh, Alice Hawthorne, Cowl, and the Emperor. This distinguished quartette having exhibited before the royal visitors, straightway did rendezvous at the post, 7 to 4 being currently offered on the courser with the Milesian name. The contest was one of very ordinary pretension: the pace, I presume, must have been bad, as the rider of the winner said, "the faster they tried to go, as he waited on them, the more he found his horse able to run over them." The Emperor won easily by two lengths. A distinguished personage expressed great gratification at a gentleman having won: why have we any but gentlemen engaged in essays of chivalry? The piece of plate thus won by Lord Albemarle is about being sent to Russia for the Emperor's inspection. Libel was on this day the winner of a race of greater length than on Tuesday; but it was a handicap, for which he carried 7st. What of that? Friday brought down but few strangers: the occupiers of quarters in the neighbourhood, however, and the residents, mustered pretty strong. The racing lacked nothing in quantity: its quality was second-rate. There were three classes of the Wokingham. Some idea of the nature of this meeting may be formed from the fact that £2,600 was taken for admissions to the Grand Stand; and malgré the suppression of the gaming booths, the receipts of the ground must have been enormous. The whole income derived from the four days of Ascot Races would-if accurately stated-afford an interesting item in the statistics of the British turf. LEATHERLUNGS THE "LEG." BY THE EDITOR. CHAPTER VIII.-"THE SEASON." "When the gay months of carnival resume "Funds, physic, corn, poetry, boxing, romance, For attaining at last the least knowledge of any." РОРЕ. Moore. The feast of Easter, we observed, just as Rhapsody pounced upon us in the opening of the foregone chapter, and bore us clean away from the progress of our biography-the feast of Easter is the signal for the commencement of the flocking together of all mankind, called the "London Season." Whitsuntide is to the capital what Michaelmas is to the country-it is harvest time. The process of reaping and gathering, indeed, generally extends beyond midsummer, but spring is the division of the year wherein the metropolitan husbandman for the most part stores his garners, as his line of business principally lies in green crops. These, at the date of our presents, are to be understood as waving in lavish luxuriance on every hand, from the dainty exotics around the counters of Howell and James to the rank verdure that chokes up the avenues of "the Corner." "Find fault with our morality as you will," retorted the Leg, to some observation of mine, "but it's the morality of the great. Suppose we do square our system on the principles of commercial pre servation-videlicit, always to win something, leaving the loss for the pockets and philosophy of our neighbours-what then? You have but to walk along Rotten Row, and by the side of the countless equipages in active operation along the Serpentine, to be convinced that legging,' under counterfeit names, is an universal fashion amid the world's wide, wealthy aristocracy. Of course, I myself, born to more brains than breeches, am liable to be hunted for my peccadilloes, as Caleb Williams was by Falkland; for while theory gives us law as justice, and bonded rights as freedom, all the world knows in practice power is law, and wealth, opportunity. Her grace, there, who has just rolled by us, would turn up her right honourable nose at me, belike, for my humble attempts at bettering my condition; but is'nt she the sharpest shot at the odd trick within the empire, and can't she make up her book' as well as any man going?" "You take high and wide aim, methinks," replied I; "but in instituting yourself censor of the manners of the rulers of fashion, you are like our Indian directors, who set up as judges of generalship, and dictate lessons in war to warriors, when they've never attended, perhaps, a review at Wormwood Scrubs, or pommelled a puppy dog, in the whole course of their lives." For all that, I know as much of the games of some of your ladies of quality as I may hap to do of their lords. Now, I can forgive anything but humbug, and that it is which reigns paramount in these fine London circles, aye, far more than in your training-stables. Is'nt every girl in the market during the season, and knocked down to the highest bidder by the parent-auctioneer, or worse, by herself? Here is a slip of a quotation I took from a fashionable book the other day, written by one of their own order. And it's àpropos, as the Frenchman says, of the best of 'em. Here it is "Lady Lilfield was a thoroughly worldly woman-a worthy scion of the Mordaunt stock. She had professedly accepted the hand of Sir Robert because a connexion with him was the best that happened to present itself in the first year of her début-the best match to be had at a season's warning. She knew that she had been brought out with the view to dancing at a certain number of balls, refusing a certain number of bad offers, and accepting a better one, somewhere between the months of March and July; and she regarded it as a propitious dispensation of Providence to her parents and to herself, that the comparative proved a superlative-even a high sheriff of the county, a baronet of respectable date, with ten thousand a year. She felt that her duty towards herself necessitated an immediate acceptance of the dullest good man extant throughout the three kingdoms; and the whole routine of her after-life was regulated by the same rigid code of moral selfishness.' "Well, this is only one species of your marketable commodities. I will give you another: the wife, as it might be, of a commoner in your Imperial Parliament. We'll see if she doesn't understand exchange and barter better than I. Why, not long ago, the lady went as regularly to Kensington Gardens at an off-hour of the day as a policeman attends his beat; and she was as regularly met by a young peer, and strolled with him down one secluded path or another when she ought to have been in her nursery. Perhaps you think she had love in her heart thus to risk censure and court scan |