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which enabled him to open in St. James's Street, as he did, he would have died a beggar like most of his cotemporaries. The idea of his Club was a masterly one-though the accident of fashionable prestige enabled him to carry it out as brilliantly as he did. He lent money to the right men, and they touted' for him-it is notorious that they did no need to catalogue their names. It is all up with it now -and well it is, for some shocking bad cases have come off at Crockford's. It was just the place for a put up' plant, and some awful ones have been perpetrated in its painted chamber. Previous to its establishment, when a pigeon was to be plucked, there was both time and place to be managed-a Star and Garter dinner for example; but then, as in the Auldjo case, the getting-up would sometimes transpire, and the malice aforethought became so manifest as to overturn the tables. The gambler's game is up, depend on it, not only in England, but all over Europe."

"For that reason," I urged, " let him rest, and no man write his epitaph; stick to your own stock, the great ringleaders of the turf. I want to hear about betting as a trade. Is there as good an aprés for the professional bettor in the pulls' he gets as a commissioner, as there is at French hazard for the banker? Where lies his advantage?-for that he has long odds on his side there cannot be any question."

"Any man," Leatherlungs continued, "who makes a business of any thing, must have a superiority in the practice of it over him who only occasionally adopts it from chance or caprice. Thus, in the ring, experience and study enable men to turn to good account nice combinations of the odds, to calculate the fluctuations of the market, and to seize instantly on any point that may be open, having even the remotest probability of profit attaching to it. This is independent of sharp practice, by which a good deal is picked up of course. As, for example, during the last meeting at Newmarket, a betting man, was incessant in his offers to lay long odds against a colt in one of the two-year-old races. At length, somebody, quite green to business, was tempted by the price, and backed him. The animal never showed at the post, having been severely injured on its way from town, and so his backer was put in the hole. Such an affair is not quite regular,' but quite common. The best money made in the ring is by those who trade in it scientifically-though Jim Bland left a fortune behind him fished out of it, with no great assistance from mathematics."

"Betting round is a science compounded of memory and calculation; these enable the book-maker to perceive instantly and accurately how the odds are to be laid off to advantage. Indeed, looking at the large fields of horses now backed for the various great weight for age races and handicaps, betting round would ensure considerable gains to any one making it a business, but for the terrible drawback of bad debts. Every year produces its company of defaulters-a vast cohort of troops, all armed in complete brass-freebooters, who haunt our streets and squares as Robin Hood and his merry men did the forest of Sherwood. I rarely stroll through Regent Street that I do not meet a worthy who went off with some eighteen thousand pounds

a few years ago, making his afternoon mall, with a life-preserver in his hand, the size and weight of a kitchen poker, by way of a dress cane. Now probably betting-men are prone to be extravagant also, which is against their chances of realizing. Bob Ridsdale, for instance, must have gone a great pace during the period he kept race-horses. Their mere necessary expenses are very heavy, as I know to my cost, and, upon the principle of giving the devil his due, you must allow I am no prodigal."

To this I assented by a nod of approval-in fact, I wish my friend Leatherlungs were a little more liberal in the matter of his personal appointments; he might conveniently wear gloves now and then, for example, for it is indisputable that his fins are not very fascinating.

Wide awake as the world gives the Leg the credit-or discreditof being, prudence is not the badge of his tribe. I suppose I must not class Mellish as one of " ours;" but had he stuck to racing, he would have made a good thing of his skill in horse-flesh. Richardson and Beardsworth would jilt fortune whether she would or not. Poor Halliday made a bad out of it, and Arthur Pavis, who got more "mounts" than any jockey of modern times, couldn't lay by a guinea for a rainy day. I suppose man is an imitative animal, and, as your racing professor, as well as amateur, has the practice of going fast always before him, all the theory in the world won't teach him to go gently. His career, like a match over the T.Y.C., is a short and a merry one, for the most part. Only it neither suits my fancy nor my subject, I could show that this is not a matter that should give us much concern. Perhaps I may revert to it some other time, but just now I am not in the mood for moralizing-but for a decent dinner. I did well on the last Derby, and here's my motto for it-and he pointed to this passage in a book he held in his hand:'dans les periods d'infortunes les diners à quinze sous chez Flacoteaux -dans les grands jours le petit rocher de Cancale"-and he whistled himself to his cab as a commentary on its philosophy.

THE CHASE.

(Concluded.)

Hertfordshire we have spoken of. Mr. Parry now rules the roast in a masterly style, having succeeded Mr. Delme Radcliffe, who came after the veteran Mr. Hanbury, to whose memory, both as a sportsman and a gentleman, Mr. Radcliffe does ample justice in his "noble science." There is one capital story relative to Hertfordshire habits that will bear repeating here. Mr. Hanbury, as many of our readers will know, was head of the great porter brewery of that name in London; and one of the old gentleman's ways of keeping people in good humour, and pacifying "fox-damage," was by presents of the foaming beverage. "Having," Mr. Radcliffe says, "omitted,

upon some occasion, the transmission of one of these, with his wonted regularity, to a certain quarter, he (Mr. Hanbury) received an anonymous reminder to the following effect:

'How can you expect that the foxes will thrive

If they have no porter to keep them alive?"

Hertfordshire hound-keeping must be an expensive amusement. according to Mr. Radcliffe's account: "For every fox that is found, from one end of the country to the other," says he, "the sum of one sovereign is booked, allowed, and regularly paid. The fees of earthstoppers, from half-a-crown to ten or fifteen shillings, according to the number of stops within the province of each, amount, on the average, to four pounds per diem. Thus, suppose that the sport is limited to the finding of one fox, we start with an expense of five pounds, as the smallest tax upon the day, independent of all the inevitable wear and tear." This, however, is a metropolitan county; and all luxuries are dear about London.

Huntingdonshire, and the counties that run up towards "The Wash," have one of those noble private establishments, of which England may well be proud, in the shape of Lord Fitzwilliam's splendid pack, with the veteran Seabright at its head, a first-rate horseman and huntsman. Still we believe Lord Fitzwilliam's is a less visited establishment than almost any going, certainly than any on such a scale and with such pretensions. Cambridge men talk of them, and toast them; but Seabright generally keeps too wide of the seat of learning to allow of their doing much more. These days are sometimes recalled in after life by the turning up of some such document as the following (unreceipted perhaps):

Kent-the garden of England-is only in a "so so" way, we fear, in the hunting line. We remember Mr. Oxendon, now Sir Henry, with as pretty a turn out, on a small scale, as ever we looked at. His forte was bitches-spayed bitches; and he certainly had as neat a lot as ever were seen. Would that he had stuck to the brush, and left the turf alone! Those Epsom downs have been the "ruin of many a good cry," as they say of the increased speed of hounds. Mr. Brockman succeeded Sir Henry; and a committee had the Tickham the last time we heard of them-rather an awkward name for a pack.

Mr. Dyke, of Lullingstone Castle, in the northern part of the county, long had a neat pack of dwarf foxhounds, which he increased in size on the late Colonel Joliffe resigning his Surrey country to the Old Surrey, and the consequent withdrawal of the latter pack from their Kent district; but they were not of many seasons continuance under their new form.

Lincolnshire has fared better than its more aspiring neighbour Lei

cestershire. Lord Yarborough's hounds have hunted the northern part of the county for above one hundred and sixty years. His lordship is perhaps the most superbly appointed and finest turn out altogether in England. The hounds are every one of them perfect pictures, and the horses the pick of this great breeding county. They are chiefly, if not entirely, supplied by his lordship's numerous and opulent tenantry. The servants are said to be allowed two scarlet coats each season, and have men to clean their leather breeches for them. It was in this, and the neighbouring Holderness country, that the hideous fishermen's boots were first introduced. Caps, now becoming so common, and, generally speaking, so unbecoming, have long been worn in Lord Yarborough's hunts, sometimes without the adjunct of the scarlet coat.

Leicestershire, as we said before, has seen the ups and downs of life. The memory of man runneth not to the time when Mr. Meynell took possession of this choice region of hunting, but he occupied it into the beginning of the present century. The late Lord Sefton, we believe, succeeded him, but our business is more with modern times.

Twenty years ago Mr. Osbaldeston was master of the Quorn hounds; he was succeeded by Lord Southampton, who was followed by Sir Harry Goodricke, who was replaced by Mr. Errington, brother of Sir Massey Stanley, after whom came Lord Suffield, who was quickly followed by Mr. Hodgson, who gave way to the present master, Mr. Green, the first local master, we believe, these hounds have had; Mr. Meynell, who hunted it so long, had not an acre of land in the county.

Sir Richard Sutton, after a long and magnificent occupation of the middle part of the county of Lincoln, bought the late Earl of Lonsdale's hounds, and took Rutlandshire on the retirement of his lordship; and Lord Henry Bentinck, with the Rufford, hunts five and sometimes six days a week.

"The South Wold" country to the "south east" has not been so fortunate in the permanency of its masterships, and is generally in the market every second or third season.

Middlesex may now, we think, be scratched out of the list of "hunting countries," unless Mr. Ackerman takes it as an appendage to the Eclipse Sporting Gallery.

Monmouthshire we know nothing about. It seems to have had two packs in Col. Cook's time-" The Llangibby, Mr. Williams," and "Mr. Morgan's." We hope they are there still.

Northamptonshire made a goodly appearace on paper in Colonel Cook's days. We say on paper, because several packs are put in whose head quarters were in other countries, but which had coverts on the various margins of this midland sporting shire. The Pytchley, however, have always been to Northamptonshire what the Quorn have to Leicestershire; and surely if the Leicestershire men point with pride to their great founder, Hugo Meynell, the Northamptonshire men may do the same by their great John Warde.-John Warde, fifty-seven years master of fox-hounds.

The Duke of Grafton, Lord Fitzwilliam, and the late Sir Thomas

Mostyn, all figure in the Northamptonshire list as hunting the country; but, as we said before, the " Pytchley" is the real pack.

Sir Charles Knightley and Lord Spencer, then Lord Althorpe, succeeded Mr. Warde, if we mistake not; after them came the renowned John Musters, then the equally renowned Mr. Osbaldeston, then Mr. Wilkins, then Mr. Payne, then Lord Chesterfield, then Mr. Smith (Craven Smith), then Sir Holyoake Goodricke, and now for a second time that justly popular native sportsman Mr. Payne. Let the Northamptonshire squires do by him what they have never done by any foreign master-support him well, and show that it has been the man, not the money, they looked to.

Northumberland seems to go on smoothly and prosperously; Sir M. W. Ridley in Col. Cook's time-Sir M. W. Ridley at the present day. The difference seems to be that formerly they hunted twice a week, now they hunt four times. Lord Elcho, again, in the north, hunts five days a week, and Mr. Watson, occupying a country between the two, hunts twice a week.

Nottinghamshire also continues to flourish under Mr. Foljambe, one of the most extensive and best breeders of hounds of the day, but ill health, we tear, is to close his career with the present season.

Oxfordshire has continued steadily in the hands of Mr. Drake since the secession of Sir Thomas Mostyn, and after various changes since the late Duke of Beaufort resigned the Heythrop country; it is now in the hands of Lord Redesdale; Lord Radnor's late pack, we believe, is in the hands of a committee.

Rutlandshire we have spoken of, except in as far as the Duke of Rutland's princely establishment is concerned, which, though located in Rutlandshire, is, in point of operations, a Leicestershire pack. It is still, we believe, under the management of Lord Forester.

The S.'s are all in a weakly way. Shropshire, Somersetshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, and Sussex have all had their many changes. Sir Bellingham Graham, who formerly headed the Shropshire list, has long been off the roll of masters of hounds; so has Mr. Boycott, also Mr. Walter Gifford; Sir Thomas Boughey resigned for want of foxes; Sir Rowland Hill too has disappeared; also Mr. Wickstead; and Sir Richard Puleston and Mr. Mytton are no more. The Albrighton country, as it is called, from Eccleshall to Bromsgrove, and across from Wellington and Wenlock to Cannock and Wednesbury, in Staffordshire, is now hunted by Mr. Holyoake; besides which there is the united pack (bespeaking a reduction) at Church Stretton, in Shropshire; also, we believe, Mr. Eyton's, of the Mount, near Wellington.

Somersetshire has had many changes-Captain Luttrell, Mr. Tatchell, Mr. Hall, and others; but Mr. Horlock has been steady to his part of the country, having now hunted it about 20 years, ever since he bought Mr. Warde's hounds, and removed from the Craven country to the neighbourhood of Bath.

Staffordshire has seen Mr. Wicksted, Mr. Chadwick, and Lord Anson, now Lord Lichfield. Mr. Meynell Ingram, grandson of the great Meynell, is still the lord paramount of that county-hunting with Staffordshire, part of Shropshire.