god of thieves and race-horses—between the
river and the city walls. At Leeds it was
penned in by a green amphitheatre of hills on
three sides, and looked almost rural. On the
fourth was the smoke-stained stone viaduct of
the railway, emblem of the pace of modern
commerce. Leeds is one of the dingiest, ugliest
towns in Europe, but the site of the show-
yard was not only picturesque but appropriate.
It was in sight of marks of the past and
present generation—fields and farm-houses and
factories, the ancient river and the modern railway.
A dozen turnstiles fill up the doors in the
wooden walls, and give, by their continual
clicking, signs of the eager multitude. A
privileged entrance is reserved for members of the
Royal Society. They pass in by a gate that
seldom turns, for out of five thousand less than
five hundred used it, during a week in which
nearly two hundred thousand persons paid their
entrance from one shilling to half-a-crown.

A division, which, until the live-stock judges
made their awards, separated cattle, sheep,
horses, and pigs from steam-engines, plough-
harrows, drills, horse-hoes, rollers, carts, and all
the long list of miscellaneous goods, had been
removed the previous day, and, passing in, we
stand before the many streets of the agricultural
fair, bewildered by the far-spread uniformity
of the long parallelograms. There is a
main street running down the centre show, from
it on each side branch minor streets, formed of
sheds, under eighteen of which, right and left,
are placed implements and machinery, and
under twelve the animals; that is to say, there
are thirty-six sheds, divided by the main streets,
devoted to manufactures, and twenty-four to
breeders. The mechanical department, which,
on the original formation of the society, scarcely
occupied a line in its prospectus and charter,
which barely filled a dozen road-waggons, now
spreads over two-thirds of the yard, pays the
cost for all the space it requires, and makes,
probably, ten times as much trade as all the
rest, for it is easier to sell a dozen ploughs than
a dozen bulls, rams, or boars, by sample. As a
general rule, what is alive more interests the
multitude than what is made, and therefore to
the live stock on the half-crown day the
majority first repair, to feast their eyes on their
particular fancies, whether it be amongst the
horses, or the horned stock, or the sheep, or the
pigs.

On the cheaper days, when vans and excursion
trains pour in their thousands on thousands,
it is different, for the first rush is to those sheds
where the implements afford the most convenient
seats for unpacking the provision baskets and
refreshing exhausted nature. Leeds certainly
presented on the last morning of the show, say
about nine o'clock, a specimen of an agricultural
pic-nic on the largest scale ever seen. At
least ten thousand souls were eating, and
gazing, and talking what sounded very like
German. Corks strewed the ground in bushels.
Thirty thousand entered that day.

But to return to our muttons and beeves.
The four-and-twenty live stock sheds presented
a complete picture of the best specimens of all
the best breeds of every kind of animal bred in
England (not Scotland) and Ireland, with the
one serious drawback, that in the ardour of
competition, and under the influence of the
universal prejudices of the judges, a considerable
number of the choicest competitors had
been so filled with corn and oil-cake, sugar, milk,
and London porter, that, to say the least, they
would require a long course of regimen and
exercise before they could fulfil their manifest
destiny, and become the progenitors of healthy
successors.

Besides the animals sent by a numerous, yet
select, list of noblemen, squires, and wealthy
graziers, expressly to win prizes, the show is
also, as has already been observed, largely and
usefully used as a fair, where the best prices may
be obtained for a good-looking animal with a
respectable pedigree. Without pedigree, bulls
and cows are as much out of place at a Royal
Agricultural Show as a German cotton-spinner
at the court of Prussia.

It is a curious fact that there are breeds
highly esteemed by graziers in certain districts,
and by butchers in the more fashionable
markets, which are scarcely seen in the breeding
or fat stock show-yards.

English graziers eagerly purchase lean, and
sell at the best prices when fat, Highland and
Scotch polled cattle and Welsh runts. Black-
faced Highland and Cheviot sheep, for half the
year at least, fill the butchers' shops of London
with very choice legs and loins. In Lincolnshire
and the adjoining counties you may see
square miles of Lincoln sheep feeding down
turnips, and thus protecting what was waste
from returning to its original barrenness. But
it is only by exception that these favourites of
the butcher appear on the champ clos of the
Royal Agricultural tournaments.

Norfolk and Suffolk have a breed of polled
cattle which the dairy farmers of those counties
highly esteem. There were just six specimens
at Leeds, all sent by one locally patriotic nobleman.
Sussex boasts and highly values a breed
of large red long-horned cattle, bearing the
county name, which seem like an enlarged
bovine edition of Devons. Like the Devons,
they are famous draught cattle, and are amongst
the picturesque features of the Sussex strong
clay valleys, as they slowly toil along before that
inheritance from the Saxon, the huge wooden
turnwrest plough. In the great metropolitan
market—where, after years of toil, they come fat
—they are not despised by the butcher who has
to feed sailors and soldiers, for at least "they
are sweet, and die well"—that is, look well in
joints, and yield good prices and a fair share of
internal fat.

At Leeds, five special prizes brought from the
same herd two specimens of Sussex's pride—a
bull and a heifer; while of the polled Angus,
the special favourite of the meat merchants of
London, the producers of the beef that always
head the price currents of Newgate and