thony are both forward riders; the former hunts on the Mondays, the latter on the Thursdays; Baron Meyer every day, including usually one bye each week, when they meet at eight o'clock in the morning. The rendezvous on those days is generally near the Cheddington station of the Birmingham Railway, which allows the master to get to New Court in good time for business. This crack pack of staghounds is hunted by Roffey, who looks and goes as if to the matter born, and whipped in by Tom Ball. Mr. George Samuels, a capital workman and a courteous gentleman; Mr. Montefiore and Mr. Davidson, cousins of the Barons Rothschild; and some of the most ardent spirits from the Oakley, Mr. Drake and Mr. Lowndes, are frequently out with it: Mr. Levy, of the Oakley, and Mr. Cook, of Mr. Lowndes's country, are among the élite of the strangers. Mr. Anderson, of Piccadilly, of whom I have already spoken, is a constant attendant, and brings into the field its crack specimens of horseflesh. This first-rate judge and first-price buyer had, during the season, two hunters-Optimus and Pale-face-which probably were the best pair in any man's stable in Great Britain. I heard from himself that he had just parted with both to one of the first flight of Leicestershire fliers. The on dit at Mentmore was, that the price was a thousand guineas a proof that the days of the chase are not yet quite numbered. Some of the masters' nags could not have been put in for nothing. Baron Anthony is a welter weight; and when you come to mount fifteen stone or the like on thorough-bred cattle, or a trifle less than full blood, you must do it for a consideration." I saw him ride a great strapping chesnut that, as they say at Oxford, must have cost a dollop of money.

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The establishment at Mentmore is, I believe, the property of Baron Meyer, who has also bought a great deal of land in the neighbourhood. He will, with the acuteness of his family, no doubt introduce a better state of rural, or rather farming, policy than at present exists. The proprietors seem the most thoughtless prodigals of land under the sun. You pass from one farm to another, almost without exception, by means of green lanes, containing as much square surface as many of their pasture fields. When you reflect that much of the land is let for three pounds an acre, and that these lanes run through the heart of the best arable and pasture enclosures, while you are astounded at the woeful waste, you are assured that, with common management, the agricultural resources of England are capable of being increased by a per centage bearing usurious relation to its instant production. I have not a shadow of doubt but that, out of the land turned to a mischievous non-account in those byeways-many of them wider than Pall Mall-a handsome estate might be got together, in the Vale of Aylesbury alone. In that case, what a frightful loss of prime land may not be calculated upon in this country, whence thousands every year emigrate, from the want of a few yards of soil for a kitchen-garden. Thousands of our fellow-citizens adopt voluntary transportation, and offer themselves as provender to the cannibals; while, for want of tenants, thousands of sylvan nooks and flowery corners "waste their sweetness on the desert air." This is lite rally the fact, and one that cries aloud for reform. summation, so devoutly to be wished for, is at hand. corn laws will be the greatest rural blessing that ever

Probably this conThe repeal of the fell upon our island,

if it turn our rural population from the bigotry of their system-blindness to their ways, and attachment to waste. A country life is abstractedly the happiest of all. Look at the soldier, the sailor, the merchant, all toiling for that which the farmer enjoys from the cradle to the tomb. This very undue proportion of the boons of Nature, no doubt, has made him insensible to their worth, from the earliest ages. Let him wake to wisdom soon. The voice of the prophet, Horace, thus apostrophizes the people of the woods and fields :

“O fortunati nimium sua si bona norint, agricolæ.”

THE HIGH-METTLED RACER.

PLATE III.-THE SWEAT.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY J. F. HERRING, SENR.

How comparatively few in "the course thronged with gazers" have either any knowledge of, or consideration for the talent and trouble required to bring the high-mettled racer anything like fit to the post! How small the thought they give as the satin gloss of his coat strikes the eye, or the evenness and elegance of his action elicits their admiration to the many-trying rehearsals that have led to so brilliant an appearance! How little, in the bliss of ignorance, do they feel for filled legs, bad sweaters, shy feeders, queer tempers, false trials, high blowing, breaking down, and the many other ills that son of Job, the accomplished trainer, must reconcile himself— and his employer to.

In the whole art and mystery of training it is almost unnecessary to say that the process of sweating occupies a most prominent and important place. It is the very basis of the system-the most trying to the constitution, the legs, and we may add, the heart of a horse; and the greatest tax on the judgment and attention of those who have the management of him. The length, the repetition, and the severity of the sweat, with its effect on different animals, call out the real ability of the trainer; while the mere walking-so-long, and gallopingso-far part of the business, the training by rote, in fact, might be attempted by any lad with but a common share of care and observation. But the sweat, the most necessary, and so by the rule of this world the most hazardous exercise in the whole education, must have the head as well as the power of a master to regulate it--an experience and a perception that shall teach him not only the surest way to gain the good, but the safest to avoid the evil. If a horse goes suddenly and altogether amiss, it is even betting but he caught a cold in a sweat; if he's got a leg, and can't come, ten to one but you may trace it to that last sweat; and if the young one shows the jade when

he is out, and refuses his corn when he is in, of course it comes from being so beat and cowed in the long sweat. We will suppose, however, that he goes right well through them, one and all, up to the week before running; that he feeds as heartily as only a horse can feed; that his legs are as "fine as paint, and as hard as iron;" and that in his trial he struggled as game as a pebble, and ran every bit as long as the old horse himself. We will admit all this; and then as we strip him some fine morning near the good city of Coventry, or get him out betimes on the Rhodee, we only put it to Mr. Samday himself whether about the most anxious and nervous moment for a trainer is not when his horse is taking the last sweat before he starts for the plate? And Mr. Samday, who has got into a knack of thinking a great deal and saying a very little, allows us to repeat the question once or twice more, and then confirms our views with a "just so."

Within the last twenty or five-and-twenty years, considerable amelioration has been afforded the race-horse in nearly everything connected with preparing him for public performances, and more especially as regards the severer part of his labours. Long continued walking exercise, for instance, has in a great measure been found to answer for the perpetual gallop, gallop, gallop, which sent so many a high-mettled racer on the lower stages of that career far before his time. Shorter distances and lighter weights again have tended somewhat to lessen the formidable character of the sweats, although we must confess that in some stables, John Day's for one, the preparation, particularly for young ones, is perhaps more trying than ever it was. This however is a course which, though advisable enough perhaps for some single great event or so, shall form no part in our plans. Of the two we would rather see the Sir Hercules colt-if our friend will only just throw his eye over him again, he'll find the white-legged one there, going up the gallop, bears every sign of the black baronet about him-we would rather see, we say, our colt worn out in public than in private, or, in other words, at least have some fun for our money. Indeed, if we must be forced to the extremes of over-trained or under-trained, we should give the preference to running him into condition, like many a provincial plater we might name, which, after claiming first for cne heat, third for the next, and second for the last, one week; then second, first, fourth, and second at another place; and second, second, and second, at a third-has forced himself into winning form in just about the same time the Newmarketer would have been used up or broken down. We mean, in fact, to flatter him just the least bit in the world in his work and now as they have pulled up, and we have really already let you more into the secret than we intended-suppose we march up towards them? "Well, Harry, did your horse go pretty well this morning?"

*Many light flashy horses are sweated altogether without clothes; and towards the end of a preparation it is almost a general rule to dispense with them. We remember, indeed some years back, an odd-tempered horse, belonging to Mr. Malony, who was entirely trained without clothes, for the very good reason that he would not wear them. In appearance he looked much like a hack, particularly when travelling, though in fact a very fair racehorse.