RACES AND STEEPLE CHASES IN FEBRUARY. Wolverhampton and Brewood, 2; Sudbury, 2; Carmarthenshire Hunt, 3; Edgware, 4; Nice, 4; Tenby, 5; Birmingham, 8; Nice, 8; Beaufort Hunt (Chippenham), 10; Streatham, 11; Newbridge, 15; Lincoln, 16; Moreton-in-Marsh, 18; Mansfield, 18; Pontefract and West Riding, 18; Harrow, 18; Boston, 19; Windsor, 22; Nottingham, 23; Derby, 25; Chelmsford, 25; Baschurch, 26. COURSING MEETINGS IN FEBRUARY. Ludlow, 2; Powderham, 2; Everleigh, 2, 3; Upper Annandale, 2, &c.; Leinster, 3, &c.; Rufford, 3; Cordington, 3; Wenvoe Castle, 3, 4; Kyle, 4; Hereford Open, 4, 5; Carlisle (Knipescar), 5; Hordley (Salop), 6; North of England Club (Bellingham), 8; Louth (Lincoln), 9, 10; Thornton and Ince, 9, 10; Ford and Pallinsburn, 9, 10; Baldock, 10, 11; Wolverhampton and Tong, 11; Ludham (Norfolk), 11, 12; Brampton, 11, 12; Handley (Cheshire), 16; Beckhampton, 16, 17; Waterloo, 17, &c.; Stamford, 23, 24; Burton-on-Trent, 24, 25. 闕 "There he sat, and, as I thought, expounding the law and the prophets, until on drawing a little nearer, I found he was only expatiating on the merits of a brown horse."-BRACEBRIDGE HALL. WAY BILL:- -Mems of The Month-Death of John White-Two-Year-Old Racing Top Yearling Prices for 1853-68-Cricket-The Doncaster Corporation -The New Epsom Course-Opening of the Bentinck Club. WHEN HEN the biographer of Admiral Rous has (many years hence, we trust) to do his duty, there will be a perpetual entry in the table of contents-"He apologizes again." Such is the penalty of a hasty brain and hand. We thought that he had most solemnly, with his left hand in a big inkstand, and his right hand holding his dog-whip towards the sky-sworn by all his gods in the Chaplin case, that he would "never let his angry passions rise." It seems that he forgot his vow, but that on the very day when he had broken out once more, he wrote repenting of his outburst, and telling The Times, like Mr. Toots, that "it was no matter," and that they had really better take no notice of what he said. One portion of the letter, in which he said that the touts could be bribed by a £10 note to keep a secret which was worth thousands, showed how much the whole was worth. We wrote this opinion at the time, though we were in a fearful minority, and really the only part of the letter which held water at all was the reproduction of the old simile of The Spider and the Fly. People overlooked for its sake the utter looseness of the rest of the production. A little capital has been made by the Admiral's friends out of the action being technically stopped before the Admiral's letter of apology appeared, but that was only a very natural arrangement on the part of the mediators, and nothing more. It surely is an extra apology for a letter when a man confesses that he rued sending it, and tried to stop it a few hours after it left his hand. The other events of the month are pretty varied. We have heard of "braying a fool in a mortar," and now Bray has caught it for calling a trainer a fool, and is obliged to confess that he has often seen double since that fatal morning. After all, it is probable that the ready way in which the little tout indicated Nelusko (who was third) as the coming Cesarewitch horse, vexed Jennings quite as much as the epithet. Jennings is said to be the greatest master of French in Newmarket, but his English seems of a less classic order. The ritualists are very fond of saying that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," but some more earthy notion of the kind seems to tincture the Newmarket dialect. On the whole, the Newmarket touts, with the £200 damages, the announcement from the bench at Westminster, that they tout for Earl Stamford, a member of the Jockey Club, and the collapse of Mr. Clarke's meeting, have been rather exalted race of late, though the Dawson's, to their sore discomfiture, did try a load of their young things when they were confronting their foes foot to foot. It is no use owners calling out against touts; as with scarcely an exception, they themselves keep horses merely to get money out of the public, and the public will defend itself if it can and watch what work is done. After all, what can it tell about trial weights, if an owner and trainer keep their own counsel? The handicap weights seem to have been satisfactory as a whole, and those who have been styling Blue Gown the Eclipse of an the present century seem surprised that Mr. Topham did not drop on to him more heavily. We have'nt two Eclipses in a year, and his race with The Earl was a very close one last year. Besides, being beaten so easily as he was at 12lbs. by See Saw for the Cambridgeshire does not help on the idea, backed as it it may be by those faithful adjuncts of Mrs. Harris, the "competent judges." Belladrum's friends are still extatic; but the Champagne Stakes sticks in our throats, and we doubt whether the stable have ever been able to explain it. There was very little fault to find with his fitness that day, if he had been good enough. Bab and Master Macgrath also seem all the go for the Waterloo Cup, but we remember the great Patent, Basil, and Calabaroono pots, and don't feel so confident. Rattling favourites very seldom pull it off in coursing. Cock Robin bas quite destroyed public faith in himself, and Charming May is the veritable Chloe from the fair river pastures, near Bolton Abbey. We have lost by death our honest, downright friend and contributor of some thirty years standing, John White, or "Hawthorne." We shall no more hail each August his forecast of the grouse on the Grampians, so often prefaced by the lines which told of the muircock's crow, the eagle's haunt in the glen, the sweet moss where the roedeer browse, and all the other delights af his heart, and ending up with an exhortation to his brother-sportsmen to "on wi' the tartan, and off wi' me ride.' He was head-keeper to the Earl of Mansfield, in whose service he had been for nineteen years; but he bad not the charge of the Grampian range shootings, and was only expected to show himself there when the Earl went into bothy residence on the 12th. His command extended over the Lowland shootings round Scone and Lynedoch -one on the banks of the Tay, and the other of the Almond. Lynedoch, which is some six miles out of Perth, is a lovely wild spot, and he lived in the heart of it, not much more than a hundred yards from the now-ruined cottage where old General Lynedoch, as long as his eyesight lasted, spent three months of his summer. Pheasants, partridges, roedeer, "fur" in abundance, wild ducks, and a sprinkling of capercailzie composed John's charge. The graves of Bessie Bell and Mary Gray are by the rocky stream of the Almond in those grounds, and drew many picnickers with leave and without. Sometimes these outlaws would let themselves in by a key at the great gate under the cliff, and we often laughed to hear the rout when the "lion of Lynedoch" bore down upon them with dishevelled mane, and brought them to their bearings, and exacted ample apologies and submission, when they thought that all was serene, and the forks and the accordion were being busily plied. He learnt his game lesson well with his father, who was head keeper at Arniston, near Edinburgh (a position now held by one of his sons), and when quite a lad, he was constantly out coursing with Sir Walter Scott. The bard liked his enthusiasm, and had many a chat with him as he led his dogs, and thus indirectly fostered the taste which he always had for a bit of verse and prose on field sports. After this he was fifteen years at Abercairney with Mr. James Moray (whose songs and dances and imitations of an old woman discoursing in sound Scotch were for years the very heart of the Caledonian Hunt revels) and his brother, Major Moray. The former kept a pack of hounds in Perthshire, and John was a keen preserver of the fox, and had lots of good mounts for his fealty. He used to send Old Maga many a line about them as "Brushwood," and when they were given up, he had plenty to tell of "Merry John" Walker, and his great doings in Fife. He was a much lighter weight in those days, and generally there or thereabouts, and not unfrequently on Walker's own horses, who was glad to accommodate one who was as proud of showing plenty of foxes as he was of pheasants, and knew well that the keepers' slang that they couldn't go together was merely their jealousy of the rabbit tithe, which Reynard clings to as rectors did to their geese and eggs before William Blamire and Tithe Commutation. However, Walker left "the little kingdom" of Fife for Wynnstay in '45, and his friend John ripened into seventeen stone; but their friendship was unabated, and John went round by Wales to stay with him the last time he was in England. A few years ago when the Carse of Gowrie Club was commenced, his old coursing tastes seemed to revive. He not only became a representative member; but he won the cup two years ago with his red dog, Duncan Grey, which was presented to him by the Laird of Hoddam in Dumfrieshire, and at his third effort he divided the stake with the same dog, and won a course or two with him in the Biggar Stakes at the Scottish National. In almost the last letter we had from him he discoursed quite learnedly on greyhound sires, which was opening out a new vein for him; but he had been, we think, at Hoddam, and had "the tendency" encouraged by visiting the grave of Hughie Graham and seeing Tak 'Tent. He was appointed as delegate of his club, with the Hon. Capt. Arbuthnot, to the coursing congress in the Waterloo week. John was also a great fisher, and there was scarcely a stream or loch in Scotland where he had not cast his fly, and to good purpose. He landed many a noble salmon on the banks of the Tay, and preferred it before all other sports; but when he told us (who had not seen him perform) of his agility, and his playing a fish for more than an hour sometimes at T.Y.C. pace along the banks, we could only gaze in wonder at his burly un-Mills sort of figure, and congratulate him upon his being "got so fit" for the Derby week with a salmon to "lead work" all spring. He was out deer-stalking with the Prince 66 Consort in Glenartney Forest, when H.R.H. first came to Scotland, and he had some capital stories of his keeper's experiences, and not least among them what the old woman of the glen predicated of Dhuleep Singh, when that dusky potentate first came owre the muir amang the heather." The frost always found his eye true and his hand steady for the curling stones, and he won a prize not many winters since at that game. He was also a capital rifle-shot, and he cherished a silver medal which he won in 1829 when at the Border Club a stripling of 20, and which Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd-with whom he had often lived and fished and shot near the Braes of Yarrow-hung round his neck. Few better game-shots went into a cover; but he always said that we were undoubtedly his master, as, when during a stroll with him, we found from the startled screams and notes of the birds that there was "a Lollard 'i the wind," we begged the gun he was carrying, and killed five cats at a shot-i. e., a disreputable, vagrant mouser with four kittens inside her. He delighted in his profession; and in such a retired spot, among the laurels, "where once a garden smiled, and still where many a garden-flower runs wild," he had fine cover for his pheasants close round his lodge, which was almost hid in jasmine and honeysuckle. We often sat with him in that parlour, and listened to his good stories, amplified rather at times by the repetition of his pet phrase," I said to Mr., says I," but very amusing, and full of character, for which he was a keen watcher. As each Derby began to loom, he was anxious to be up and on the Downs, but every year he regularly said that he should never come again. Last year he kept his word, and whenever he did come of late, his greatest fascination was to watch poor Lord Hastings' on the Jockey Club balcony at Epsom, book in hand, and red flower in button-hole, and all the bettingmen below seeking to devour him. . He saw that game played out in Hermit's year, and considered that if "that Barebones" could win a Derby, and a cranky beggar like Marksman come second, it was time to give up coming. On the off days or on the Saturday, if there was a great pigeon handicap, he would go and load for his young master, Lord Stormont, and the North Countrie men always delighted to see John's honest, hearty face among them. He had known lots of them as children, but he had hardly a grey hair in his head. He knew a leading book-maker, and from him he received tips, but they did not often come off, and to judge from the state of his book, when he arrived in the metropolis, John was not very constant to his Derby loves during the winter. At Perth he was a well-known character, driving through in his trap to Scone, or in his friend Paton the gunsmith's shop, up to his crupper in fishing-rods and reels, and breech-loaders, or talking to Speedie about his salmon takes. He went to Scone for the last time on the evening of the 30th, on a very rough night after a long day of cover shooting at Lynedoch. He had a bad cold at the time, and as there was so much snow on the ground the Earl did not shoot on the last day of the year, so that he was enabled to nurse himself and yet feel that he was not off duty. On New Year's morning he became worse, and congestion of the lungs setting in he died early, with his daughter at his side, at five on the Sunday morning He was buried at Moneydie Church, about two miles from Lynedoch, on the banks of a little stream which falls into that Tay he loved so dearly, near the salmon-breeding ponds at Stormontfield. A local paper, the Crieff Journal has the following lines to his memory, which shows that in his humble walk, he has left some "foot-prints on the sands of Time," in both the places where he lived and did his duty so well. They run as follows: "Weeping echoes in the Braes of Lynedoch and Abercairney," "Alas! he's gone. Who's gone? Constant friend, man everywhere." Some papers are quarrelling as to whether Mr. Gladstone is The Beast. One says that the letters in his name calculated as Greek numerals make up 666, and that therefore he must be it, another replies that they only make up 663, and that he isn't it. Racing men have more fearful forebodings about Sir Joseph Hawley proving the Beast, and there being an end of all racing, if he carries his motion about two-year-olds. Of course the fourth resolution about not running |