sensation, however, awaits the decision of its elder brother to get any character of its own. For the Derby the chief enquiries have been after Surplice and Scott's lot, or Springy Jack, per se, as the champion of it; he's a horse and a half to the stable, and will be a bit of a teazer, before the winter's in or out, to his brother sigma, "as you shall see." The Doncaster running has naturally brought his dire opponent, Assault, up again, with no 1ush or crowding for terms. The ring, indeed-despite "John Davis'" gauntlet is getting as melancholy, if not as gentlemanly, as need be. And so our Derby bulletin is-" had a quiet month of it, and continues inuch the same.' LATEST BETTING ON THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE : 12 to 1 agst. War Eagle, 3 yrs., 8st. 3lb.; 15 to 1 agst. Blackbird, 4 yrs., 7st. 12lb.; 15 to 1 agst. the Prior of St. Margaret's, 4 yrs., 8st.; 1000 to 60 agst. Rob Roy, 3 yrs., 6st. 61b.; 20 to 1 agst. Queen Mary, 3 yrs., 6st. 6lb.; 25 to 1 agst. Ulysses, 3 yrs., 6st. 61b.; 25 to 1 agst. Geraldine, 4 yrs., 6st.; 25 to 1 agst. Pyrrhus the First, 4 yrs., 8st. 10lb.; 20 to 1 agst. George Hudson, 3 yrs., 6st. NOVEMBER, 1847. EMBELLISHMENTS. OF SIR HARRY GEORGE WAKELYN SMITH, BART, G.C.B., GOVERNORGENERAL, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, AND HIGH-COMMISSIONER THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, &c., &c., &c. AND ALIWAL, THE PROPERTY OF SIR HARRY SMITH, BART.-ENGRAVED BY J. SCOTT, FROM A PAINTING BY A. COOPER, R.A. CONTENTS. DIARY FOR NOVEMBER THE RACING IN OCTOBER.-BY CRAVEN RECORD OF THE SERVICES OF HIS EXCELLENCY LIEUTENANT- Page. 305 318 ALIWAL, THE PROPERTY OF SIR HARRY SMITH, BART.-BY THE STAGE OF LIFE; INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS; AND TRAVELLERS ON THE ROAD.-BY CHARLES M. WESTMACOTT 330 ANTELOPE HUNTING.-BY AN OLD FOX HUNTER RACING "SWEEPS" AND LOTTERIES-BY THE EDITOR THE POCKET AND THE STUD.-BY HARRY HIEOVER AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BAGMAN;" OR ADVENTURES OF A SPORTING PICTURES.-BY WHIZ THE TURF REGISTER, 1847.-NOTTINGHAM-LEE AND ELTHAM— --NEWPORT-RIPON-BLACKLEY-NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE AND Y Morning. r 6 5523 RISES 8 15 8 57 S 4 3124 0 56 9 35 10 10 r 6 5825 1 59 10 5011 20 s 4 2726 3 2 T NEWMKT. COURSING MEETING. 3 WTARPORLEY HUNT RACES. 4 T ALTCAR COURSING MEETING. 5F WORCESTER STEEPLE-CHASES. 6S Middleham (York) Fair. 75 Twenty-third Sun, af. Trinity r 7 8 M EVERLEIGH COURSING MEET. 9 T BARTON-ON-HUMBER COURS. Mr 7 10 W LOUTH GRAND NATIONAL ST.-C. s 4 17 11T UNION LYTHAM COURS. M. 12 F SHREWSBURY RACES. 13 SBishop's Castle Fair. 14 111 50 r 7 227 4 s 4 24 28 629 6 s 4 20 N SETS. 2 4 2 20 afternoon Twenty-fourth Sun. af. Trin.s 4 11 15 MASHDOWN PARK COURSING M. r 7 20 16 T WORKINGTON COURSING MEET. S 4 17 W LYTHAM CHAMP. COURSING M. r 7 18 T BRAMPTON COURSING MEETING. S 4 19 F 20 S r 7 2711 3 711 011 35 s 4 312 4 28 21 Twenty-fifth Sun. af. Trinityr 7 30 13 5 47 22 M noon. 0 30 0 55 1 21 1 45 23 T MALTON COURSING MEETING. 2 10 2 30 24 W DORTON & BRILL ST.-CHASE. s 3 5916 6 26 2 55 3 15 25 T LOUTH ST.-CHASE. Frome Fair r 7 3617 7 28 3 40 4 0 26 F HORNBY PARK COURS. Meet. s 3 57 18 8 33 4 25 4 45 27 S r 7 40 19 9 39 5 5 5 30 s 3 55 2010 43 5 50 6 15 6 40 7 5 7 35 8 0 Newport Pagnel...... 18 & 19 | Louth (Lincoln)...... 29 COURSING MEETINGS IN NOVEMBER. Whitehaven............ 1 & 2 | Middleham............ 9 & 10 | Lytham Champion 17, 18 & 19 Newmarket Union Lytham THE RACING IN OCTOBER. BY CRAVEN. "O you kind gods! Cure this great breach of this abused nature." 66 : SHAKSPEARE. The autumnal meetings at Newmarket serve to wind up the turf season-a consummation, if perfect in the spirit as well as the letter, devoutly wished for by all who make racing a craft and calling. There is no species of hard labour known to our penal code that will bear comparison with the toil and trouble" of the ring the treadmill is fun to it. It's bad enough to travail with hand and foot; but "head work, governor," like the pace, kills." Thus much may be urged in mercy and mitigation for the leg who has little else, in good sooth, to move our pity or sufferance. As if the turf were not of itself a sufficiently costly sport, we find it infested by a plague of parasites more deadly than the fabulous vampires; not merely permitted to exist, but fostered and pampered. I shall perhaps be told this has been the case since the establishment of racing as a great popular pastime; but I answer, not upon a scale bearing any proportion to the present, making any allowance for the difference of circumstances. In the last century there were some loose fish, indeed, to be met with on every race-course; but now they shoal wherever a meeting is announced. And how else should it be? Not to speak it profanely-the turf is a foreshadowing of kingdom come, "where none is afore or after other; none is greater or less than another".... There might be no objection to such a patriarchal system, probably, in the abstract; but its partial application, as practised on the turf, is a crying evil. That there should be any spot of earth whereon the man of honour and the scoundrel can associate without scandal, is deeply to be deplored that there are such "bowers," as Moore has it, none familiar with our race-courses need be told. The whole object of racing is fast turning clean from its original and fitting purpose. It has become the whetstone of knavery-the recognized refuge of rascality-the conventionally acknowledged resource of the broken in fame and fortune. See! there is the ring "Imbrowned with native bronze, lo! stands This is the foreground, populous with a motley multitude: high and low, rich and poor, Dives and Lazarus. In the distance spread misty and mysterious groups-touts, dupes, tempters, nobblers; and mingled with the perspective, a mighty host of small deer-the rabble of sweeps and lotteries-the fry whereon the sharks prey-the common spoil on which the leg feeds and gorges. These fill up the subject: but it has others of more mark-to point its moral, as well as give a stronger relief to the design. Here lounges the premeditated levanter, who has "gone for the gloves," with four posters ready to whirl him to the nearest railway station, in the event of the coup turning up against him. There, poised like a falcon for the stoop, watches the issue of some event of interest, the "picker-up," ready to fly to the next electric telegraph, that his agents in the great city and elsewhere may "get on" to the premium of a foregone conclusion. Who shall say this is an over-drawn or an over-coloured picture of the turf, as it now exists? And allowing the fidelity of the sketch, where is the wonder that racing lacks the countenance it once enjoyed, or, that the course is not, as it was wont to be, a rendezvous for the "nobles and the gentles" of the land? Time, that changes all things, has not left untouched the character of our national sports. Many, indeed most of them are essentially altered—and I write it with pleasure-not for the worse. Woodcraft, athletic exercises, the sports of flood and field generally, wax faint and lose the enthusiasm with which they were pursued, as the refinements of life rob nature of its hilarious elements, and man becomes more and more a ruminating animal. The squire of a hundred years ago has met his fate either in the Scylla of political economy, or the Charybdis of social reform. But who shall say that the Meynells and Loraine Smiths were unworthy successors of the Lumpkins and the Westerns! Foxhunting is not-never will be again-that which it was at the end of the last century, and the commencement of the present. Has it lost by the exchange from a business to a pastime? One cannot conceive that it has. It has still enough of the true flavour of a fine manly diversion, albeit not quaffed pottle deep as of yore. The chace is now a diversion, and not the occupation of a man's life. Racing has become a profession-and just by so much the less enjoyable and more fraught with social inconvenience and mischief than when it was merely an amuseWe have not done much for the advancement of good fellowship and friendly feeling in our yachting societies by the introduction of such contrivances, as handicap sailing matches, and regattas with their subtle rules and regulations. But in the character of a popular sport, yachting has greatly improved, both in its materiel and spirit within the last twenty years. Rowing and cricket are pastimes in the most legitimate meaning of the phrase; while the battue is doing for shooting what the ring is for racing-laying the foundation of its unpopularity-probably of its ultimate annihilation. The hope of the latter lies in the violence of the crisis, by which the seeds of the disease may be blighted, ere the harvest time shall come to "destroy more men." The systematic nature of default, as it is developed now at every great meeting of the year, must presently work as an alterative on the body politic. It is not to be expected that people will suffer themselves to be skinned with the instinct of eels. May the hour of the uprising not be far distant! Every true friend of a truly English recreation will echo the maxim of my motto ment. "O you kind gods! Cure this great breach of this abused nature." * The autumnal annals of the British turf for the year of grace 1847 shall record especial instances of the charity that covered a multitude of sins, and thereby was enabled to hide their horrid glare from the eyes and reason of its judgment. Taking for its thesis the line of Virgil— "His lachrymis vitam damus et miserescimus ultro," |