h. m. d. h. m. h. m. h. m. 1 S Sale of Roy. Yearlings-Hamptonr 3 50 28 2S Sun. after Ascension. [Court. 8 8 7 N 3M Cricket-Lord's, M.C.C. v. Lan-r 3 49 1 4T Ascot Races. 5 W 6 T Ascot Cup Day. 7 F Oxford Term Ends. 3 29 12 26 12 51 SETS. 1 16 1 41 8 51 2 5 2 29 9 50 2 53 3 16 r3 48 310 39 3 41 4 6 [caster.s 8 9 2 8 S Sale of the Middle Park Yearlings. s 8 12 9 S Whit Sunday. [land.r 3 46 10 M Cricket-Lord's, Middlesex v. Eng-s 8 14 11 T Birmingham Horse Show. 12 W 511 52 Morning. 5 22 5 48 6 6 12 6 40 712 21 7 8 7 37 812 47 8 11 8 45 r 3 45 9 1 11 9 20 9 53 8 15 10 1 3610 2210 54 r 3 4411 2 311 2511 55 s 8 1612 2 30 17 M Cricket-Lord's, North v. South of r 18 T Bibury Race Week. 19 W 12 23 [Thames. s 3 44 15 8 8 1816 r 3 44 17 s 8 18 18 10 r 3 45 19 10 42 4 28 4 45 s 8 192011 9 5 4 5 23 23 S First Sunday after Trinity.r 3 4521 11 85 5 43 6 2 24 M Crkt.-Ld's., M.C.C. v. Cambridge. s 8 19 22 12 0 6 23 6 45 25 T Newcastle Races. 26 W Harwich Regatta. Morning. r 3 4623 27 T Cricket-Lord's, M.C.C. v. Oxford. r 3 28 F Royal Mersey Regatta. 47 25 12 52 9 15 9 47 s 8 18 26 1 2410 1910 53 29 S Second Yearling Sale-East Acton.r 3 4827 2 111 24 11 56 Second Sunday after Trinity. s 8 18 28 2 47 - 12 27 "There he sat, and, as I thought, expounding the law and the prophets, until on drawing a little nearer, I found he was only expatiating on the merits of a brown horse."-BRACEBRIDGE HALL. WAY BILL:- -The Derby and Oaks Days-Mr. Thompson's Greyhound Sale-The Horse Show-The late Tom Brooks-The Yorkshire Hound Show. A quaint old groom, who came up with his nag to the horse show, thus epitomized the whirl and talk of the Epsom week, in his own simple way: "I like to come to this great city, and I shall be uncommon glad to leave it; money seems very plentiful, but talk all runs one way; people all talk alike; it's nothing but this Derby and Hoaks, and brokken blood vessels; last thing when I go to sleep at night it's the Hoaks, and when I wake again in the morning it's the Derby. I suppose they'll be on this way all the year round; they never seem to tire; none of them's won much money, by all accounts. Oh, dear! I shall be glad to get back." And what a week it was! the east wind hitting you clean between the eyes, and the cold piercing the joints of your harness. Some Arabs came to one of our great hotels for the occasion, and the weather did astonish them. "It snewed and it frizzed," said the most perfect English scholar of the party, on their return; and when, they had once been put in the lift, and wound up to their room, they lay down like dogs before a big fire, and no amount of persuasive power would have dragged them to the Oaks. How country visitors were stowed away in old days, we cannot divine. Eight or nine monster hotels have arisen since Voltigeur's year, and yet on the night before the Derby, a party of three tried seven of them before they could find rest. Mr. George Hudson once said, when he was asked his opinion about the controversy between the geologists and the Dean of York, "I'm for the Dean and Moses." We are very much of his opinion. We like the good old fashions better than the new. The Derby is so much written about, that it has become a weariness in the flesh. Once you read very little about it, except in the terse Corner quotations, till the week before, and then you enjoyed what you read. You had just a long quiet analysis of the "probable starters," with their jockeys, from "Judex" and " Pegasus," while "Vates" did the poetry, and Joe Muggins's Dog" came out in the Sam Slick line. Scarcely a local prophet save " Martingale" of the Doncaster Gazette, was to be heard of. The present fast age would very soon let editors hear of it, if they treated them that way, and hence for nearly six months philosophic analysts and special commissioners are found in every nook and corner of our land, and we feel quite bewildered amid a wilderness of words, with scarcely a mustard-seed of fresh matter. However, it is over now for six months, and then the Grimstons, and the Suffolks, and all that lot, will be in the crucible in their turn. Despite all the efforts to pile up the agony, the Derby of '67 was a dull one. There was no great popular horse. The "proppy" Vauban had the Two Thousand prestige it is true, but still the remembrance of his second-class form in '66 was a damper. The public did not take as kindly to the unbeaten Rake as they did to the Dutchman of yore, and it was no use setting up Marksman as an idol, although he was to bear the yellow jacket, which Londoners adore. They did quite enough to ra tify their allegiance by backing him for a place. He had only one admirer all through the winter, and that was Mr. Verrall, and as he told us in the paddock before the race, he as fondly loved on to the close." Hermit had also one faithful knight in the special commissioner of the Sporting Life. Some six or seven weeks ago there appeared at the end of his article a telegram postcript to the effect that "Hermit will win the Derby ;" on the Saturday before he faltered; but on the fatal morning, when the colt stood at 66 to 1, he came again, and avowed his belief in print that the chesnut would get a place. The sun jumped off with the lead on the Wednesday morning, and held it till past nine. Then the sky became overclouded and watery, and those who were wise prepared for a wet day. The Victoria Station was unusually quiet, and it was both easy to book and get seats. Still, as we moved out, we left " a residuum" or nest egg of about eighty for the next train, and worked on our way with two trains a head. There was not much to be seen on the route. Some mowers were at work, and we regarded them as lunatics. Boys waved flags, and young maidens waved their " lily 'and." There was the usual potter's encampment, and the potter snoozing in his tent, with no part of him visible but his legs, and the field with nearly two score of cart-horses out for the day-masters "gone to the Derby." Some of the London cabmen had Mexican blue on their whips, as a bit of never-say-die allegiance to The Rake they had backed in the winter, and an engine-man carried a bit of broom in front of his "puffing Billy," out of compliment, we presume, to Russley. Still people gene. rally seemed most lifeless. No great favourite's name was on their lips as of yore, and if they did approach the subject, it was only to observe that they "could'nt see it. Punch's race picture 'came in for some comments; Gladstone, it was thought, had something to spare, while John Bright was "all out." As we came near Carshalton, the heavy clouds began to lower; and ere we reached the land of Banstead mutton, of which old epicures sang so feelingly, coupling it with Lincoln steers, Hantonian swine, and Dorking roosters, the hail was coming down full pelt, and the imprudent ones longed for their great coals. All the glimpses we caught of the road were most tantalizing. Fourin-hands stepped merrily along: there seemed to be no crushing; and, in fact, the only thing quite out of place was a barouche full of white hats and "blue weils." Still, if there was no dust for the latter to parry, they must have been amazingly useful in the conrse of each "hailstone chorus." Mr. Merry and his party came down in the same train, and when the well-known face was seen, some of our fellow-voyagers took it as an omen, and backed Marksman for a place at the lists forthwith. The member for the Falkirk Boroughs looked jaunty enough, as he handed his party into a fly; but Mr. Pryor's aspect was not encouraging to those who still clung to the memory of the Middle Park Plate. The fear of wet kept many out of the paddock, and those who did go had a sharp time of it. We missed many a familiar face, huntsmen more especially; but there was Jack Goddard talking to Custance of their old days over the grass, which cost the latter three horses last season. Those who had not a ticket crowded the booths for refreshment and amusement during the showers. Some were with "The Ponderous Pig," and then adjourned to "The Living Skeleton." It was, we hear, a most sickening sight: the poor fellow was far gone in atrophy; and when he had walked round, his keeper observed: Now you see him, gentlemen, wonderful thin: his father and two brothers both died of consumption." As if by some fortunate prescience, Mr. Heathcote had this very year built a wooden shed in the paddock for saddling, and very popular it was among the bipeds. Every form and manner of man rushed there for refuge-peer, M.P., and master of foxhounds, shared its cover. There stood the Tory Whip congratulating Alick McDonough, who wore the Van Amburgh colours, on the admirable horsemanship of his novice on Fairy Mount at Punchestown, and his own re-appearance in the saddle; and some of those who couldn't get in put their backs against the hedge, and thought, as the storm pattered down upon the beeches overhead, of the "sub tegmine fagi" of their school days. Alas! there was not much of the Tityrus element left in any of them. After all, the weather was very accommodating. There were four good hail showers it is true; but still the saddling, the parade, and the race were all brought off under a clear sky. Mr. Eastwood's horses were among the first to come into the paddock. Many went to have a look at the once-popular Master Butterfly; but he was not fit, and his owner only sent him because he felt that he had been extensively backed after the reports of his good looks, which were spread by one of the ex-employés of the stable. He is rather a neat horse, but he lacks calibre, and is rather straight in his back, while his head is somewhat spoilt by his ears. Let us trust that his own sister will show more promise next year. Like Blink Bonny, the mare had only three foals, and the last was a monstrosity. It had one leg of the usual size and the other like a fin, and its head seemed more like a Highland bullock's, bar the horns, than anything else. The forehead was split down the middle, and stuff came away from it as if from the inside of a rotten turnip. The mare suffered awfully, and the joint-exertions of some twenty men could hardly pass the head. Lord Hastings is an honestlooking colt, high on the leg, but with all the elements of a fair horse when he gets some months of furnishing. Dawson's "blues" were a good deal looked at, more especially The Corporal, a very corky and rather short horse, whom we at first mistook for The Rake, although he had not his quality, or peculiarly blood-like forehead. People were most puzzled about a little bay wretch, with such extraordinary hindaction, that some declared that he should be christened "Wilremhaunch." No one thought he would be in the Derby, as a fiver seemed the outside price for him, and when it turned out that he was Bedlamite by Stockwell, they said he must be brought to spite Mr. Naylor. Physiologists would have food enough for reflection if they could have placed him and Blair Athol together to show the freaks of getting. Still he was in front for nearly three hundred yards, which shows what the pace must have been. We scarcely gave a thought to Hermit. It seems treason to believe in "a knock-out:" and as Captain Machell and Daley walked across the paddock to meet him scarcely a soul looked at them, except perhaps as the leaders of a forlorn hope. Still there was a levée of a sort round him; but as the horse looked rough in his coat, and not a bit bigger or thickened since last year, they might well think that the 66 to 1 was all right enough. He is a rather dark chesnut of 15-2 hands, with a lean bloodlike head, and a careless lazy look about him. He carries his head high; and his neck, which is staglike and mean, tends to give him the appearance of a nonstayer. His shoulder is good and well laid, and his girth much better than his middle; his quarters are nicely turned, his arms and thighs have good muscular development, and his legs are short from the knee to the ground. We should not call him a powerful horse, but well proportioned, and he is so docile that a child might lead him. Such a training career was never known; some invisible hand seemed to checkmate every effort to get him right, and yet in his intervals of health the stable and owner believed that he would yet come to his real form of 12lbs. better than Knight of the Garter. The candid way in which they consistently held to this belief and ex. pressed it was of course spelt backwards, and the winking division declare it was a deep dodge. John Day's horses were good to know from the scarlet sheet of Uncas, and close behind him followed Vauban, led by Young John. The points which strike you specially about the latter are his rare middle, and his upright fore-legs, and though trained to a hair, he was only a plain candidate for the Derby Gallery. Leases was a most peculiar-looking little black, quite like an unfinished yearling that Sheet Anchor might have got; but he gave Newmarket a taste of his quality at 14 miles this year, and here he finished close up with The Rake. The sensation horse of the afternoon was decidedly The Palmer, and there was quite a buzz of delight when he stripped a perfect mass of polish, with Wells in the Kentish cherry jacket drawn as fine as a star at 8st. 10lb. on his back, and Mr. Tweedie, the stud-groom of Leybourne, at his head. He was full of life and tricks, and the "friend, philosopher, and guide" of his youth had to stick to him pretty well when he turned wayward. Still, he did not look like a stayer, and people wondered what was the origin of all this sudden faith on Sir Joseph's or the public's part. John Scott must have thought with a sigh of his old heroes, when he sent Taraban and Grand Cross into the paddock. Lord Exeter had taken good care that his colt should do no one any harm, as he had consistently told his friends in Northamptonshire and elsewhere that he hadn't a hope. For the first time in our lives we observed the crape badge on the jockey's left arm, to tell of his rare old master. We like to see such a fashion kept up, especially in days when the best men are forgotten almost before their funeral day. The Cross has hardly anything about him to remind us of his brother The Crescent, and he is a heavy-topped coaching style of colt; still, many vowed to our amazement that if there ever was a magnificent colt he was one. The Rescue was on a high leg, and no good whatever, and the same may be said of Ben Nevis. Van Amburgh disappointed us sorely with his weak hocks and long light neck, and certainly we thought that we should hardly apply to Mr. Fleming to hear about "the best horse in England" in future. Captain |