ting it was. The cove must have been there or handy-somebody's always a-hanging about with long ears. Well, go on.'

"What against Scott's two?' inquired a little man from York, fully four feet nothing.

"They don't win, for a hundred!' said a sulky-looking trader from the East.

"They do!' yelled a little man in a paroxysm of excitement. "Done!'

""Done!'

"Oy'll lay agean Doompling!' said old Crutch.

"If you can!' said a tall seedy-looking man, with an audacious look, and glass stuck in his eye. Say, if you can, old Blowhard!" The reader took a refresher from the brandy bottle, and continued: "Here now is a sample of the descriptive for you. Can you guess to whom it applies?

"Now a little good-looking bustling gentleman, whose hair is turned prematurely grey, is joined by a slender, sleepless, ferret-eyed friend, who casts a furtive glance or two, whispers some short though deeply-interesting sentence, when they separate, and throw themselves into the ring' on different sides, though with precisely the same object (open your mouth only, and try them). These are two dangerous blades, being sufficiently double-edged to meet you on the damask after having done a little stable-talk with your servant, and agreed to lay out his pony or five hundred if the thing is very good."

"That's not so worse," remarked De Montmorenci, "graphic but caustic in the satiric too he comes out strong: what d'ye think of this?"

"When some unprincipled deceiver, pretending to philosophy, said Words were given to a man to enable him to disguise his thoughts,' he must have had a declaration to make respecting his horse starting for the Cambridgeshire,' or, what is much worse, some ambiguous deceptive trap to lay, baiting it with the once-honoured irreproach able guarantee of an English gentleman's word, or even hint, which was generally as tantamount to his intentions as future events could possibly permit him to act, and of more intrinsic safety to his hearers than many a heavily stamped bond. He scorned the villanous theory as became an honest man; and if at times he disguised his thoughts, as every prudent one would do in self-defence when false colours are hoisted at every peak, he did it by casting over them the dignified and graceful mantle of silence, and not by decking them in the gratuitous garb of turf-brigandage and deceit. He in whose veins flowed the same blood that was probably shed at Agincourt or Cressy could not have coolly asked for a reporter to a premeditated snare in speech. What think you of a man of this honourable lineage publicly stating to a full house of sporting brethren, that he cautioned them as a friend against backing a horse he had in a popular race close at hand, as he had the greatest doubts of his starting, from reasons only known to himself; begging, at the same time, it might be put in black and white pro bono publico! when he knew in his heart, under high Heaven, he was giving utterance to that which he had not the remotest wish, belief, or idea of seeing confirmed, in order that his

horse (fit to run for an infinitely greater value than his own life), might be sent back in the odds his emissaries were so greedily accepting."

"Well!" cried the Leg, "if that aint drawing it XXX I'm jiggered....so now, Colonel, we'll leave other folks' business for

our own."

WHO WINS THE DERBY OF 1846 ?

BY MERLINSPRITE.

Of course not! Who would dream of waiting to know the result of a race now-a-days until after the period of its being run? Assuredly not in such an everything-before-its-time age as the present, when the gourmand, instead of stopping until the merry month of May for his dish of mackerel, can indulge his taste for that species of the piscatorial tribe in the month of January; when the fastidious patrons of the highseasoned, but poorly flavoured, annuals have their plates served up to them some four months prior to the year which they are intended to commemorate; when the young idea is made to essay the last new polka before he can articulate his A B C ; when the morning newspapers are published the over-night; when provisional committee-men go off, before their lines are completed, in anything but high esteem; when, in brief, everything said, implied, or done is in anticipation-save, indeed, plans to provide against a mortal perishing before his natural time then you must first cease to exist ere any measures of precaution be adopted. So runs the mandate of London's first civic functionary, and Neptune of modern times.

In such an era then as this, when every one evinces an inkling to "take time by the firelock," as Mrs. Malaprop observes, it is unreasonable to suppose that the winner of a race like the Derby should not be telegraphed by some knowing one antecedent to the Olympian contest.

I am that "6" knowing one' -"Balaam, blow the trumpet!"—and by

these presents I undertake, promise, and engage to speedily unravel the web of mystery heretofore enveloping the grand equine struggle at the great southern tryst; and if I fail in this cabalistic performance, may But there's no probability of such a tragical dénouement, our induction's full of prosperous hope."

I be for

It is not a matter of especial wonderment that racing prophecies should be looked for as naturally as good advice accompanies the refusal of a d-d good-natured friend to lend you the "cool hundred" you desiderated to meet that "confounded bill." It is proverbial that increase of appetite grows by what it feeds upon; thus in the sporting world,

the members of which, of all degrees, from the patrician to the parvenu, or, in other words, from the sporting nobleman to the "sporting" snob, have for some years past been treated to the gratifying summing-up of the lucubrations of those learned in stable lore:

"As by a world of hints appears

All plain, and extant as your ears."

The result is that a prophecy is now viewed as the running accompaniment of an English race.

Ye wielders of the metallic-ye drawers of beer and “ sweeps"-ye ticket holders, wait not for the talismanic prognostications of the hebdomadal and quotidian scribes, but attend to our important prediction.

The day is Wednesday, of this blessed month the 27th. Look at yonder four-posters, with their "wide awake" boys of some three score; they have just emerged from Bobby Newman's repository, a novus homo, whose cattle get over more tracts than their owner. Following in their wake is " a one-horse shay" appertaining to an inhabitant of Budgerow, who never stirs abroad, the Derby Day being an exception; by his side reclines his better-half, a "great fact" your optics are not slow to discover when you glance at the springs of the vehicle.

Here we are at the " Helephant;" a spot sacred to the inhuman hustling, hugging, and badgering, to unutterable spifflication, which our common species undergoes at the hands of tyrannically industrious emissaries from carriages of every description, class, kind, and manufacture. All of them are perpetually on the qui vive; to borrow the expressive phraseology of the respective touts "Ve honly vants vun more gent to kimpleet hour load." This is the locality the "steadygoer" selects for his embarkation, having weeks before declined sundry invitations to make one in a britchka or a landau. Kennington-gate and its pike-men now form the picture on the road. Soon are we wafted along the dusty roads:

"Drags, go-carts, post-chaises

Come rushing like blazes!"

Once more upon Epsom's Downs: the Grand Stand is gained, and now for the winner of the day. We quickly mount our spectacles. But what's this?-a messenger from our man of types appears in sable majesty before us, and his cry is not "still," but aloud he shouts for "copy, copy, copy!" "We have not yet completed the article." "Can't help it, sir," responds the imp; "must have copy, sir, directly. Keeping the press open." To the devil, then, we commit these characters in black and white, having arrived no further than when we commenced respecting "Who wins the Derby of 1846 ?"

294

THE PIRATE'S PREY.

ENGRAVED BY W. T. DAVEY, FROM A PAINTING BY V. ADAM.

Champ-champ-champ-my dearest son,
If still you think your fishing will fail,
I'll help you out, as I've nearly done,
With all the bones and a bit of the tail.

A generous act that, as far as it goes,

Though spoiling your palate beyond all doubt,
For otters, my boy, like their two-legged foes,
To properly relish, should kill their own trout;

With the stealthy step and the hungry eye

Should watch the course of the well-stock'd stream,

Ere the world has risen its trade to ply,

Or Phoebus has furnished his earliest beam.

And then how joyous the fisherman's art!
As he taketh the goods the gods provide,
And picks with all pleasure the dainty part
Of the prey he found in the silvery tide;

As he owneth a savour Lopresti in vain

From his far-famed liquids desires to know;
A gusto so hearty that e'en might detain

A Thorne in the breast of the Sauce Tally-ho!

How strange still it seems such an innocent life
Embittered should be with moments more sad!
The otter, alas! have it war to the knife,

"The pirate, the poacher, and all that is bad."

The fox, to be sure, who has ever a wish

And often a way to your turkeys and geese,
Is a knave; but the otter who sticks to his fish
A hermit, whose habits should pass him in peace.

Then hang up the spear,
and ring up
for "Will,"
To get on at once with the five-year-old horse,
As justice has mov'd from the Meet at the Mill,
To rattling the villain through Garsington Gorse.