I thought, a favourable moment, I set up my back in earnes, VA 2 getting my head down, and preparing for &suring.

head chucked up by the bride with a violenes i ime at

a kick from each of Ned's heels in my has theme In again; and just as I was intending to kick

ash-plant, and another forcible chuck up roars Ned in a voice I should not have re

ye, eh?" The suddenness of the whole thing

me, I stood still amazed: Ned, with the muse signal to move, accompanied with Com O L walked off quietly, he just gave me one put

the

lad." "Twas well he acted as he did. I was astones I
and no doubt availed himself of that circumstances &
fight between us. It was the first, and in facade
ever had.

This had occurred during the latter pas of same N
November I should be an honest twenty-mie
others we had would range from eigi

owner expressed his determination to great: n
in order to in some measure ascertain our fees passies & pe
mise as racers. To do this it became necessary that we stood be
taught to go quietly in our exercise and gallope: the ister beng inte
pensable, in order to bring us into such wind and stoutness as to enable
us to exhibit our qualities in such way as to render our trial a truthful

one.

Knowing my temper to be high, and moreover that I was in stable terms a strong resolute colt, Alick, as being a strong boy on a horse, and moreover one not likely to ruffle the temper of rather a touchy gentleman like myself, was deputed to attend on and ride me at exercise. I well remember our first morning of going on to the downs, Alick mounted me, and before leaving my box he gave me a pat on the neck, perhaps in gratitude for my being the cause of his first entry as regular riding boy, or from a liking I must allow he ever showed towards me, ingrate that I was. We were all ordered to walk round the yard previous to leaving home for the training ground. I was put in my place, the centre of the lot; but I had not walked ten steps, before, giving a couple of plunges obliquely from the string, I lashed out, and, to quote Ben's description of the affair, I sent poor Alick "as far as it would take a coach-and-four an hour to bring him back." Our trainer and Ned were both watching us all; so I was immediately eaught, and Ned got on me. I found by his firm seat, and twisting me rather roughly into a place, the last of the string, that he was quite prepared to show me I had not now Alick on my back. We went out, took our exercise, and Ned to convince me it was not his intention to bar me into my duty, rode me to the front, and calling to the others, "Keep your anlady by their heads, boys," he went off in a slow

quite convinced me he was not afraid, was not one to be taken off his guard, and his hands made me plainly feel he was prepared for any sudden freak a young one might take it in his head to perform or attempt.

"No one can control his fate," though he may generally his conduct; and fate, good or bad, places one of its agents by the side of the cradle of many persons, and we find him seated by the death couch, still holding his sway, till the pulse ceasing to vibrate, fate itself loses its influence on the inanimate remains. It was Alick's fate that the training stables should not be the arena in which he was to perform his part in life's performance. Honesty, steadiness, good temper, obedience, and good common sense, may place, for it has placed, many a man at the head of his pursuit in life; but these alone will never make a trainer or jockey.

Alick had (on his giving up his charge of me) a particularly quiet colt by Pantaloon, of the same age, put under his care. The colt and boy both being steady ones, they were walking at the head of a string of some half-dozen other young ones. I remember there had been a slight frost during the night, and it was one of those cool bracing mornings in October that gives unusual stimulus to the spirits. Alick was riding quietly, probably thinking (if he ever thought) of something quite unconnected with his business; a bird flew from a hedge near us, Alick's colt gave a start, and before the boy could collect his scattered senses, had bolted out, and was playing sundry pranks, to the terror of our trainer, who was near us on his hack. Young ones of any species require little example or excuse for their vagaries; the colt next behind Alick's followed his leader; and the rest, with the exception of myself, were all in one moment in disorder. One, with a particularly small boy on him, went straight away towards our usual gallop here I saw a specimen of tact and quickness of thought in this pigmy horseman that showed not only the hand of the future jockey, but that it was not like that of poor Alick's, screwed on inclining to the left. He found he could not stop his colt; but he did not wish the colt to find this out; so keeping his hands down, and his colt steady by the head, he took him gently up the gallop, pulled him up, and walked him back to us by the time the string had got quiet and collected. This morning finished Alick's career in a training stable, and his colt was given to Ben.

I shall not trouble the reader with an account of our progress in being got fit for the trial that the next month was to come off. It will be recollected that Ben had pronounced me. when my age could be reckoned by days only, "as big as a bull;" I was so as regards muscular form, and my constitution was what most of the human species covet; but let me tell my reader it was anything but what a race-horse need covet for his own comfort. Our exercise had as yet been but exercise; a gentle gallop of a half mile was all required of the others of my age; my unfortunate aptitude to put up flesh procured me the honour of an extra quarter of a mile, as it had of extra doses of physic, and eventually extra sweats. The little extra distance of my gallop I cared nothing about; but the sweating the best part of two miles and a-half was no joke at my age. But when over, the elasticity of limb, and indeed spirits I felt, satisfied me that, like many other things in life, it was an unpleasant necessity; and as our trainer made the sweats of all

the others far less severe, and one among us was scarcely sweated at all, it showed me sound judgment and acute observation dictated all the directions Mr. Turfman gave as to what was to be done with each of us under his care.

Much of the disappointments felt in life, much of the heart-burnings, quarrels, and sometimes hatred, engendered among men, arise from vanity. Men will sometimes bear with perfect equanimity injury from each other in person, sometimes in pocket; but mortifying any man's vanity is a proceeding very difficult for the longest lapse of time to eradicate, or with some to even soften. If I was not exempt from such weakness, I may well be excused when the wisest of the human race have been actuated by its influence.

I had been so petted and lauded by my first friend Mo, that I could not conceive any opinion could be entertained but that I was quite superior to any one of my companions; and that overweening vanity on my part was increased by the extra exertion it was thought I was capable of undergoing; short-sighted animal that I was, this was necessary, not from any conviction of my superiority, but from a natural tendency to that which if not counteracted would stop the chief desirable, or rather necessary qualities of a race horse, namely wind and speed.

I had heard that I and the colt that had occasioned poor Alick's dismissal were both engaged in the Derby and Leger, and that I in particular was heavily engaged in some of the great stakes between the two events; this further, as I thought, proved the high opinion entertained of my superior promise. I was not aware at that time that engagements are often made for a race-horse just as men often make engagements for themselves, namely, without any certainty of their being able to fulfil them. Judge, therefore, of my consternation, mortification, and, I will not say anger against Mr. Turfman, but contempt for his judgment, when I one day heard him say to our master, while looking at me in my box-" He is certainly a very fine colt, Sir, and goes rarely; I have no doubt he will make a very useful, indeed superior, horse; but if they both go for the Derby, if we have a chance it is the Pantaloon colt will win.'

I snorted with indignation-I a useful horse-I to be held inferior to a long-legged, light-carcased, tender wretch, that would not have recovered one of my sweats in a month-for to a certain degree such was my now detested rival. I vowed if I could ever, under any circumstances, find myself alongside of him, and got a chance, I would savage him.

We went on with our work, and as my early friend Mo was sometimes indulged with a view of me, his steady prediction that the Derby was a certainty to me, and the Leger only depended on what might be the interest of the stable, greatly softened my asperity, in anticipation of the triumph of showing Mr. Turfman he was a dolt, while Mo was a Daniel. The result will be shown in the coming trial.

(To be continued.)

THE RACE FOR THE ST. LEGER, 1851.

(NEWMINSTER'S YEAR).

BY CASTOR.

ENGRAVED BY J. H. ENGLEHEART, FROM A PAINTING BY H. ALKEN,

"Now then, Mr. Reporter, for your official account of the race, if you please."

Ahem! "Deceitful jumped off with a clear lead, attended by-" "Nonsense, man, that will never do; we have had all that months ago. The race, not the start, is the text here."

"Oh, ah! I beg your pardon. Well, then, Newminster waited on the mare to the road, went up about a distance and a-half from home, got to her head within the distance, quitted her at the Stand, and won in a canter by two lengths. Hookem Snivey was beaten another two lengths from Aphrodité, and Sir Rowland Trenchard finished a neck behind him; Phlegra was a bad fifth, Miserrima sixth, &c., &c."

once

We here give the companion plate of the "Great St. Leger" of last season as a becoming prologue to that now coming on. In thus honouring the Doncaster attraction, we think we are enabled to do so on very sufficient grounds. The Leger has outlived that unenviable notoriety that was so long and so generally attached to it. The Plenipo, Fang, Bessy Bedlam, and other "affairs" are now in a great measure forgotten. The sensations and shindies-the charges and counter-charges the scratching and nobbling that attached themselves so perseveringly to a Leger favourite, are now rarely heard of. The Ring has learnt better manners; and any little deception that may now be attempted is certainly much better managed. "The many dirty tricks, the innumerable attempts at roguery which have lately been displayed, have given a taint to Doncaster race-ground which it will require many years of clean fallow to get rid of." So wrote Nimrod some twenty years ago. We won't affirm it has been quite a clean fallow, but the taint is gone; and if Doncaster as a race-course is not what it was, it is something better.

The winner of the last Leger-an uncertain horse at all times-bas never equalled that performance, either before or since. No race could have been won more easily or more cleverly than it was by Newminster-perhaps the very best bred horse we have undoubtedly so as far as the performances of sire and dam are individually concerned, and tracing back quite as favourably. Since our detail of his own doings, in November last, Newminster has been out three times-in the Cambridgeshire last year, for which he was not placed; in the Great Four-year-old Stake at Goodwood, which he won very easily; and in the Goodwood Cup, without a place.

His jockey, trainer, and others concerned in securing the St. Leger victory of 1851, have already had just tribute paid to their abilities in this work. In place, therefore, of over-egging them here, we give an epitome of the race from the commencement to the present time.