stone two pounds; six and " aged," ten stone
four pounds; and, at Salisbury, in 1800, four
years old carried ten stone four pounds; five
years old, eleven stone six pounds; six years old
and aged, twelve stone. The lightest weight of
sixty years since was more than the heaviest of
the present time. In those days, moreover, they
ran four-mile heats; and now the course is a
single run generally of about two miles, and
rarely more than three. The longest distance
now ever set at Epsom is two miles and a
quarter, and the Metropolitan Stakes over this
course is falling rapidly in popularity. Indeed,
our decadence during the last ten years is very
noticeable.

At that same Salisbury meeting in 1800, as
an eye-witness assures us, any of the four horses
that ran for his Majesty's plate was quite equal
to carrying fourteen or fifteen stone to hounds;
and one of them, Black Sultan, who ran second,
was afterwards renowned as the sire of capital
stout strong hunters. We are no advocates for
heats, but let no Queen's plate be run at less
than three miles. There is not a prettier race run
at Newmarket than that over the Beacon of four
miles and a furlong, and it is quite a treat to
watch the horses striding away in the distance,
and gradually mounting the hill home. But how
seldom do we now see this course on the list?
and, when during last spring we did witness a
match over it, the couple finished in terrible
distress. Mr. Farrell would say, "It was a
pity to see them coming in." The portrait of
Eclipse was taken as he went, well within
himself, sweeping over the Beacon; but Eclipse
never ran until he was five years old; he was
a well-furnished muscular horse who could go
a distance carrying a weight, and who left
behind him some hundreds of sons and daughters
to perpetuate his fame, and he lived and
flourished to the twenty-fifth year of his age. Had
he " flourished" at this era he would have been
broken down before he had seen his fourth
summer; or they would have condemned him as a
great lumbering beast, before he had time to
develop his extraordinary powers. How many a
good horse is sacrificed to two-year-old stakes and
short courses! Here, we repeat, is the root of
the evil. It is idle to talk of farmers and others
not breeding the proper stamp of horse, when
we deny them the means of doing so.

The one great want of the country at this
time, as it has been for some time past, is the
sound and stout short-legged thorough-bred
horse. Very few such horses are now to be
found, simply because the present system of
racing tends directly against soundness and
stoutness. Or, if there be a horse of this
character about, he is almost certain to be bought
up for foreigners, who think little of flying
performances when they can get whole colours
big bone, clean legs, and good wind. The best
race of last season was that for the Ascot Cup,
when Buckstoue beat Tim Whiffler after they
had run a dead heat. The former is a great
growing horse, full of fine points, that will still
develop with time, while his opponent is a
narrow light upright animal, with scarcely a
good trait about him beyond his neat head and
fine temper. Still, at eight stone seven pounds,
he was almost equal to Buckstone: whereas,
had they carried ten stone seven pounds or
eleven stone, the weed could have had no chance
whatever. But, mark the moral of all this:
— Buckstone, a big sound powerful horse, has
already been shipped off: while Tim Whiffler,
so infirm that he never ran during the whole
year but for that Ascot Cup, still remains at
Newmarket, and is likely to remain there.

GODPAPA VANCE.

I WONDER if it would be possible now-a-days
to find as lovable a little fishing town on the
coast of England as South Cove was when first
I knew it, or indeed knew anything; for the
tall flagstaff which tops one of the pair of rocky
hills that guard its deeply-curved harbours is
the earliest landmark in the memories of my
babyhood.

I suppose I must have watched that flagstaff
and the vane atop of it from my cradle, or my
nurse's knee, for the house in which I was born
was nested against the opposite hill-side, and
whenever (as has often been the case of late
years) I dream of the tall flagstaff standing out
sharp and clear from the pleasant sky of those
old days, it, and the hill that it crowns, seem
to rise out of the boughs of the pink-flowered
almond-tree which I know grew close beneath
my nursery window.

We were children together, South Cove and
I, more than half a century ago. I may say
that I grew with its growth, and was the loving
playmate of the pretty little place, now puffed
up into a " fashionable sea-side resort," in its
simple pinafore days. The place has had small
charm for me ever since it took a fancy for
sticking glaring new crescents on its beautiful
wooded brows, and girding in its swelling shores
with abominable dusty esplanades; getting
blowzed and overblown, in short, and hankering
after fine fashions and high airs, which,
together with its high rents, effectually keep
humble friends like me at a distance.

I have heard it said, that we never prize our
most beloved ones for what they are, but for
what our own heart-limning makes them. And
in a measure, I suppose, so it is still, that I
continue to love South Cove so dearly, touching
up and varnishing over in imagination all its
real remembered beauties with the jealous care
of an exclusive passion; then pleasing myself
by worshipping my own handiwork, and finding
a sharper outline of existent reality in those
airy pictures than in the present features of any
other abode I may ever have on earth.

And yet I protest that the wonderful charm I
find in the ideal image of my dear old sea-side
home, is not in any great measure of my own
creation. The place is in renown for its beauty
still, and abounding indeed must have been the
loveliness which could have survived the taming