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Forgive me, dear 'Baily,' if thereon I attempt a sporting sermon. It has over and over again been acknowledged that where contests occur, especially racing contests, opinions will differ as to their merits and probable results. Those opinions are only set at rest by betting in some shape or other, and therefore that racing and betting are inseparable. With this acknowledged fact before us, that not all the Acts of Parliament for its prevention or regulation have been able to gainsay, let us see whether betting as it is now carried on is a good system, or well regulated.

To enter thoroughly into this question we must acknowledge that the betting interest in racing has during the last twentyfive years vastly increased. By this I mean that the number of betting men have not only increased, but that many of them have become owners of horses, and have amassed money, while the amount of betting is individually less and more cautious than it was twenty years ago, when £20,000 have been won on a horse without much trouble within a few hours of a race, without a quarter of the outlay at present required, or making him a leading favourite. It has nevertheless grown with the wealth of the turf, and been nourished by recent reforms. It has taken permanent root as an investment in our fenced-in courses, and our Tattersalls' inclosures. Its capital is in racing, and its voice is inseparable from its councils. The Jockey Club are ostensibly the ruling power on racecourses, but the mighty voice of the ring is every year becoming more powerful and crushing. What sounds like a bear garden is indeed a well-arranged bee-hive-only the honey has to be gathered in a particular and very peculiar fashion. It must be gathered without the aid of stool, box, counter, or any artificial appliance, and then its fragrance must be only smelt on a racecourse; the sweet harvest of the racing bees can only be gathered in clubs, or places beyond the supposed ken of the police or the law. In these stock exchanges the poor bees are allowed to settle, and adjust their accounts, to load and unload their honey, with the regularity of dock labourers, while the wasps of the law are content to buzz outside the windows-not daring to enter or interfere.

Watch betting men on a racecourse. There they are, huddled together, roaring in their “ very disquietude of the souls,” pushing, rushing, and elbowing each other-more like maniacs than men, No doubt there is method in this madness; but to me it looks degrading and unnecessary. Go outside the stand inclosures, and you see a few honest list-men contending much more quietly and reasonably among a host of welshers.

Lord Cadogan has ably defended the Jockey Club in his recent article in the Nineteenth Century, but, like more than one celebrated potentate of old, he may as well try to stem the advancing waves of a tide, as stop ready-money betting, in my humble opinion. I lately strolled over a well-known racecourse a few days after a meeting had been held there. The ground outside the enclosures, where the list-men had stood, was entirely covered with thousands of frag

ments of betting cards, which spoke undeniably of the fact that the British shilling had been invested preity freely in spite of police interference, Jockey Club threats, welshers, and every conceivable drawback. And we know very well that much ready-money betting is carried on within some of the stands and enclosures themselves. The present system is an encouragement to the welsher and the blackleg, because they can prey upon the honest small investor, and the genuine list-man is just as much outside the pale of racing law as his dishonest neighbour.

Post betting has annually crept into popularity. Starting-price betting is now the means by which people at a distance from the scene generally invest their money. In this way too a horse is backed simultaneously all over England, and even France sometimes, by a clever owner, without a shilling going on him at the post, and then a good long starting price is assured. A coup is janded, and the betting shops drained. I know that I am speaking the opinions of a vast number of people, who have given attention to the subject when I declare that the advent of ready-money betting is the most healthy spot on the turf horizon.

Ready money means as a rule going only the length that you can afford. The rash plunger cannot thus do more than empty his pockets. The tricks of the trade will be discouraged, and honesty and legitimate dealing will undoubtedly be encouraged. If a few more betting-house raids in our great towns come to pass, such as have recently taken place, I cannot help fancying that our newly enfranchised masses are likely to speak out pretty freely on this subject. What I chanced to hear a railway fellow traveller say the other day opened my eyes, and was disagreeably true :

“ They let the swells bet as much as they like with impunity, while I run the risk of a night in a police-cell, and a heavy fine, if I try to invest a crown on a horse. May be I can as well afford my dollar as some of the swells their monkeys. If this is not one law for the rich and another for the poor, 'I'm blowed. A friend of mine got locked up at Manchester, last week, for just stepping into a back parlour to have a bet—as decent a fellow he was as ever breathed, and you should have seen the state of mind his wife and family are in about it. Ain't he turned Radical just?"

Thanks to cheap sporting literature, and the many great races that can be seen at Manchester, Derby, Leicester, Four Oaks, and Newcastle, for a shilling, the well-to-do artisan knows as much about racing (or thinks he does) as his master and the squire, and he resents a law which is “total abstinence” to him, and “free drinking” to the swell.

I am not going into the morality of the thing, nor shall I dwell on the political economy which seeks to protect the savings of the poor, and encourage thrift rather than profligacy.

To talk about putting down betting by law is absolute nonsense, when there is hardly a leading newspaper published but what prints the odds on all the great races, and these are read by the million. Thousands bet, who never go near a racecourse, and know little or nothing of the merits of the horses. We ought, I believe, to make betting as safe and honest as possible on a racecourse, and discourage it elsewhere. To do this it must be regulated in a far different way than at present. · Ready-money betting is after all the most healthy and legitimate way of backing horses, and I fail to see the dreadful objections to it that have been raised by Lord Cadogan and others. The little man says, “ Save me from the welshers"; the big bookmaker says, “Clear our rings and courses from men who are merely robbers”; the British public say, “Why are our racecourses every year becoming less reputable, and a burden to the police?” My answer is, Because a futile attempt has been made to put down ready-money betting.

Let all betting-houses be put down rigorously, except Tattersalls', whether under the ægis of rich or poor ; but on a racecourse, between the hours of 10 A.M. and 6 P.M., let a certain number of duly licensed lists be allowed, in the hands of men, who can give security for their behaviour, and ability to pay their engagements. Let these lists also be allowed to exhibit prices of certain great races to come, say for one month previous to their taking place, except, perhaps, in the case of the Derby, and two or three more such leading contests, upon which the list keepers should deal, say, three or four months before the event. The outsider's and blackleg's occupations would then be gone. Peer and peasant alike could invest what they pleased, and win or lose with equal contentment.

Instead of the present hoarse roar of the ring, which to the instinctively sensitive ear of my delightful young Ascot friend was so objectionable, we should have little more than the subdued noise of rows of well-arranged bureaux, appropriately placed, and opening upon the stands and course, where the business of betting would be got through with regularity and punctuality. The swell would still be saved the trouble and bother of attending the list by a middleman or broker, who would register his list work for him, being solely answerable to the list keeper, and taking his commission from his employer.

An immense source of revenue could thus be obtained for racecourses from the rent of the lists, which should be licensed in proportion to the importance of the meeting, say from twenty at an ordinary meeting, up to a hundred at a big meeting. The Jockey Club would also create a revenue for the benefit of the turf by the issue of such licences. Competition would rectify prices and ensure fair dealing, and thus betting would be legitimised in the only way possible, in my opinion. All would have to be done in broad daylight, under the strictest protection and regulation, and that vile word, “ welsher," would die from our vocabulary. I am aware that to carry out this reform successfully the Jockey Club, or the ruling authority of the turf, under whatever title it may in future be known, must itself be regulated by charter or Act of

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Parliament, and must be endued with power to lay down salutary rules, and to enforce them. This every well-wisher of the turf has long since felt to be necessary and indispensable, looking at the speedy growth of the vested interests of the turf-the Joint Stock Companies' courses that have come into existence all over England

and the sooner it is taken in hand the better for the community. I must not be understood as suggesting that I would do away at a fell swoop with all betting except at the lists. Members of Tattersalls' rooms only should have the privilege of holding their place as at present. Many of them would soon no doubt avail themselves of the chance of taking a list. How few of them but can now mourn over a list of bad debts; their only chance of recovering which is to encourage their debtors to go on and bet more, in the hope of their paying them up eventually.

I fancy I see many a sneering, incredulous smile as this article meets the critic's eye, and the word “ Utopia” comes uppermost on the lips of not a few. Still, dear · Baily,' as you have given me so kindly the space, in which to air my crochets, and my fair inspirer has found the text for me, I am not ashamed to state my case, and shall read or listen ad alteram partem with all the pleasure in life.

Racing requires many things for its sustenance and enjoyment. Its refinement is coming upon us apace, and with that refinement I long to see a total reform in our betting arrangements. Picture to yourselves, dear readers, the exquisite arrangements that human art and invention could carve out of lists. The odds moved on the boards by electricity, paying and receiving over mahogany counters, cards of shapes and colours to denote the amount of the investments, and stamped like a railway ticket with a date, number, and name of race, as well as the name of the list-keeper. Method, regularity, civility, and dispatch combined, and every ticket to be presented within three days of the close of a meeting, or otherwise to be worthless to the bearer. It might be wise to limit the stake to be made with the outsiders or smaller list-keepers to a sovereign in each case, and of the insiders to a hundred pounds, so that the temptation to gamble on the part of the British public should be not greater than they could probably afford. The roar of the ring would then be a thing of the past, and no longer would the incessant “Two to one, bar one!” greet our ears, offending the senses, and discounting the pleasure of racing.

Racing must be cosmopolitan, as I have said. Gate-money meetings are a vast step in that direction, and the suggestions, which I have ventured to make for a reform in the laws of betting, would form a salutary agendum in the same direction, and one that Borderer joins with many an earnest lover of the turf in hoping may soon come to pass under our new democracy.

BORDERER.

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AMATEUR TRAINING. The amateur athlete has often been described as a product of modern times, and there is something to be said for the assumption, although it has been rejected by the most learned authorities on sporting subjects. But whatever doubt there may be as to the truth of that theory, no one will dispute the fact that, in his method of physical preparation for athletic events, the amateur of the period has struck out a line of his own. Amateur training, as distinguished from professional training, is a growth of our own times, and one which is in many respects worthy of some attention.

If we go back sixty years, we lose all record of systematic competition between amateurs in England for which anything like regular training was required. The first Oxford and Cambridge boat-race was rowed in 1829; the amateur championship of the † hames was instituted in the following year. The College eight-oared races at Cambridge date from 1827; those at Oxford from 1836, and the Henley Regatta from 1839. And these seem to have been certainly the earliest competitions for which men trained at the University. Isolated examples might be found, perhaps, of eccentric undergraduates who backed themselves against time to perform pedestrian feats, and who took the trouble to make themselves fit for the ordeal by something that they supposed to be a suitable course of preparation. Occasionally, moreover, a sporting gentleman-commoner, who owned a particularly speedy hunter, would undergo severe treatment under the orders of a professional pugilist, with the object of bringing himself down to such weight as would enable him to ride his animal in a forthcoming steeplechase. But beyond these rare exceptions, which are hardly worth noticing, there was no notion in the Universities, or in the army, or anywhere among the upper classes, that there could be any credit and renown in subjecting oneself to the sort of discipline prescribed for racehorses, fightingcocks, or fighting-men.

As for the professionals, they had for a long while past been acquainted with the rules of training in their most Draconian form. We owe to the existence of the Prize Ring, besides other more doubtful benefits, the existence of a code of this sort dating from before the present century. Where this code originated it would be extremely difficult to say ; nor is it much easier to guess what sort of men were the originators of it. There is, of course, just a bare possibility that it may have been handed down by tradition from the old times when Roman gladiators were trained according to set regulations for the amphitheatre. But, independently of the obvious objections to supposing that an obsolete system was preserved by oral tradition through so many centuries in which there was little or no occasion for its exercise, the dietary prescribed by the lanista was, as far as we can judge of it, very different in several respects from that under which Tom Cribb and Bendigo were prepared for