legitimate a means of engaging in the sport.
Thistley Grove is at this time about the most
successful of any stable in the kingdom, either public
or private; and a brother of our Mr. Shepherd
is now in receipt of the highest salary ever paid
to a private trainer. He has six hundred pounds
a year, with a capital house to live in, and, even
beyond this, " farms" the horses and boys for
his employer at so much a head. This scale,
however, is considerably beyond the average.
As a rule, a trainer is now a well-conducted,
comparatively well-educated man, with, of course,
the occasional exception we find in every other
rank and calling. But the ignorant cunning
sot, once too true a type of his order, is dying
out with the old-fashioned huntsman, who got
drunk as a duty when he had killed his fox.

Let us suppose that the laird of the Thistle
Down, in the pride of his heart, has presented
you with one of those famous mares we
disturbed but now under the elms—more fatal gift,
may be, than that Trojan Horse whereof Virgil
has sung. The Dowager Duchess is your own,
and straightway your ambition is fired to win the
Derby. With good fortune, the year's keep of the
mare and other preliminary expenses, your foal
has cost you some seventy pounds up to the day
he is born. Subsequently, when weaned, there
will be a year and a half of the idleness of infancy,
what time he is being fed with corn, fondled and
handled and half broken; and this will call for a
full eighty pounds more. Then, in the September
previous to entering on his second year, he goes
up to school, where he gets board, lodging,
attendance, and teaching, for somewhere about
fifty shillings a week. The customary charge
in a high-class public stable, is two guineas a
week, including the lad: while to this must
be added the smith, saddler, physic, and other
incidental charges, to bring up the total. A
year and a half spent thus with Mr. Dominie will
add another item to the account of one hundred
and ninety pounds; and as you keep him specially
to win the Derby, his expenses to and at Epsom
will be but some eight pounds more. The stake
is one of fifty pounds each, the jockey's fee for
a " chance" mount is three pounds—he will
expect five hundred if he should win—and so, by
the time that lilac body and red sleeves is
"coloured" on the card; by the time that
those three-and-thirty thorough-bred colts have
dipped down from the paddock to the post,
there is not one among them who faces the
flag but has cost some four hundred pounds
to get there. During the year 1861, between
eighteen and nineteen hundred horses actually
ran in England and Ireland, while there were
many others which, from a variety of
circumstances, never appeared, although in training.
Beyond these, even, we must include the
steeple-chasers, whose names rarely appear
in the strictly legitimate records of Wetherby.
Then we may guess at the amount of money
expended on horse-flesh, living at the rate
of from two pounds five shillings to two
pounds ten shillings a week each horse. The
large breeding establishments, the outrageously
heavy travelling expenses, when a horse pays
a guinea a night for his box. and other items
of outlay, we must not stay to consider but,
"keeping" them to their work when at home,
they have, of course, the very best of oats and
hay, all bought in at the best prices: while a
trainer will often pay a farmer more for the
privilege to exercise on a down, than the tenant
gives for it as a sheep-walk. So far from this
being a detriment to the land, "the bite" is
nowhere so sweet as where the horses gallop;
and the flock will continue to follow the string,
as they change from one side of the hill to the
other.

Let us leave the high-mettled racer, where
we first found him in such good companionship ,
with the little lambs mocking his long
stride, as they run matches against each
other to the tinkling of the starting-bell with
which the wandering ewe will clear the way.
How different in its sober, monotonous echo, to
that quick, thrilling alarum which proclaims
"they're off!" When, in the noise and turmoil
of the crowded course, we are challenged on every
side by the hoarse husky Ishmaelite who will
"lay agen " everything and everybody; when,
amidst the din of discord and the wild revelry of
such a holiday, we catch a glimpse of the yellow
jacket of Aristophanes as he sweeps by in his
canter, or struggles home to a chorus of shouts
and yells, of cracking of whips and working of
arms; hero, then, though he may be, high
though that number nine be exalted, we see
little of the beauty and poetry of the thorough-
bred horse's life. We must seek this, rather in
the sweet solitude of the downs and by-ways,
where the shepherd's hut is the ending-post, and
the farmer, thrice happy in his ignorance, will
lean carelessly on his stick as they march by
to ask " What's the name of that 'un?"

NOT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

IT is not the least striking part of the following
shameful story, that the facts it narrates are
not yet one hundred years old.

Abbeville, a manufacturing and commercial
town in the province of Picardy, and now a
chef-lieu d'arrondissemeut in the department
of the Somme, had of old been accustomed to
witness absurd and barbarous punishments.
About 1272, a murderer whom the Mayor had
put in prison, was taken out by his orders at
the moment when the murdered person breathed
his last, and swore over relics, in the presence
of the citizens assembled by ringing the bell,
that he would depart from the town within a
fortnight, and cross the seas never to return.
In 1286, by judgment of the town and by counsel
of the Mayor and Sheriffs (echevins) of Amiens,
one Jean d'Omatre, found guilty of counterfeiting
the stamp applied to the Abbeville cloths,
was branded on the face with the real stamp,
and banished for life. In 1291, an individual,
suspected of larceny, was banished, after slitting
his ear, with the threat that, if he came back
again, they would hang him by the neck. ln