rearing, backing, plunging, shying—
apparently the result of their hearing of nothing
but their own order and John Scott.

Grand Dramatic Company from London
for the Race-week. Poses Plastiques in the
Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard
at seven and nine each evening, for the Race-
Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the field
beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week.
Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians,
important to all who want to be horrified cheap,
for the Race-Week. Lodgings, grand and
not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging
from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!

Rendered giddy enough by these things,
Messieurs Idle and Goodchild repaired to the
quarters they had secured beforehand, and
Mr. Goodchild looked down from the window
into the surging street.

"By heaven, Tom!" cried he, after
contemplating it, "I am in the Lunatic Asylum
again, and these are all mad people under the
charge of a body of designing keepers!"

All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild
never divested himself of this idea. Every
day he looked out of window, with
something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking
down at men after he returned home
from the horse-country; and every day he
saw the Lunatics, horse-mad, betting-mad,
drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the designing
Keepers always after them. The idea
pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk, the
whole of Mr. Goodchild's impressions. They
were much as follows:

Monday, mid-day. Races not to begin
until to-morrow, but all the mob-Lunatics
out, crowding the pavements of the one main
street of pretty and pleasant Doncaster,
crowding the road, particularly crowding the
outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and
shouting loudly after all passing vehicles.
Frightened lunatic horses occasionally
running away, with infinite clatter. All degrees
of men, from peers to paupers, betting
incessantly. Keepers very watchful, and taking
all good chances. An awful family likeness
among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr.
Thurtell. With some knowledge of expression
and some acquaintance with heads (thus
writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen
anywhere, so many repetitions of one class of
countenance and one character of head (both
evil) as in this street at this time. Cunning,
covetousness, secresy, cold calculation, hard
callousness and dire insensibility, are the
uniform Keeper characteristics. Mr. Palmer
passes me five times in five minutes, and, as
I go down the street, the back of Mr.
Thurtell's skull is always going on before me.

Monday evening. Town lighted up; more
Lunatics out than ever; a complete choke
and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the
Betting Rooms. Keepers, having dined,
pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at
the moneyed Lunatics. Some Keepers flushed
with drink, and some not, but all close and
calculating. A vague echoing roar of
" t'harses " and "t'races" always rising in
the air, until midnight, at about which period
it dies away in occasional drunken songs and
straggling yells. But, all night, some unmannerly
drinking-house in the neighbourhood
opens its mouth at intervals and spits out a
man too drunk to be retained: who there-
upon makes what uproarious protest may be
left in him, and either falls asleep where he
tumbles, or is carried off in custody.

Tuesday morning, at daybreak. A sudden
rising, as it were out of the earth, of all the
obscene creatures, who sell "correct cards of
the races." They may have been coiled in
corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having
all passed the night under the same set of
circumstances, may all want to circulate their
blood at the same time; but, however that
may be, they spring into existence all at
once and together, as though a new Cadmus
had sown a race-horse's teeth. There is
nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards
are madly cried. There is no patronage to
quarrel for; but, they madly quarrel and
fight. Conspicuous among these hyænas, as
breakfast-time discloses, is a fearful creature
in the general semblance of a man:
shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and
devilry, bare-headed and bare-footed, with a
great shock of hair like a horrible broom,
and nothing on him but a ragged pair of
trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat—made
on him—so very tight that it is as evident
that he could never take it off, as that he
never does. This hideous apparition,
inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power of making
a gong-like imitation of the braying of an
ass: which feat requires that he should lay
his right jaw in his begrimed right paw, double
himself up, and shake his bray out of
himself, with much staggering on his next-to-no
legs, and much twirling of his horrible broom,
as if it were a mop. From the present
minute, when he comes in sight holding up
his cards to the windows, and hoarsely
proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency,
Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your
Honorable Worship—from the present
minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished,
at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and
night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious
intervals, to the brays of this frightful
animal the Gong-Donkey.

No very great racing to-day, so no very
great amount of vehicles: though there is a
good sprinkling, too: from farmers' carts and
gigs, to carriages with post-horses and to
fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road
from York, and passing on straight through
the main street to the Course. A walk in
the wrong direction may be a better thing
for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course,
so he walks in the wrong direction. Everybody
gone to the races. Only children in the
street. Grand Alliance Circus deserted; not