THE HIGH-METTLED RACER.

PLATE IX.-THE FARM.

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

"What say'at thou, Dobbin? What! shall hounds await,

With open jaws, the moment of thy fate?

No better fate attend that public race

A life of misery, and an end, disgrace.
Yet bear and freely bear thy fortune still;
Obey but one short law-thy driver's will→→
And justice to thy memory every true,

Shall boast the mighty loads that Dobbin drew;
While back to childhood shall the mind with pride
Recount thy worth at every turn and tide—
The road-the chase-the turf itself-when thou
Held'st high thy braided mane and comely brow;
And oft the tale shall rise to general fame,
Upon thy generous spirit and thy name."

BLOOMFIELD.

"It is a fact not only worthy of mention, but pregnant with its own instruction, that persons who have long enjoyed all the advantages of an elevated social position better support the reverses which condemn them to humble and narrowed fortunes, than do the vulgar-minded, when by any sudden caprice of the goddess they are raised to a conspicuous and distinguished elevation. There is in the gentleman an element of placidity and quietude that suggests a spirit of accommodation to whatever may arise to ruffle the temper or disturb the equanimity."

If the accomplished Harry Lorrequer-and what better authority on the attributes of a gentleman ?-can thus speak of the high-bred man, we may surely venture to apply his words with nearly equal force to the high-bred horse. Only look at the poor old Hero, degraded as at length we must confess him to be; only mark the willingness with which he sustains the passing scene; and after that, who shall deny the "element of placidity and quietude, the spirit of accommodation to whatever may arise," which has and does still distinguish his career. One would be inclined to suppose that the easy dignity and cool self-possession of his high and proper place the lounging saunter on the Downs, and almost apathetic indifference on the course-would have but too clearly presaged his inability in any other sphere. Yet is it so? Does he

sink in heart as well as rank? Far from it-the clever, ready, handy hack, Lady Louisa's "love of a pet," and Lord Tom Noddy's greatest rival in her affections, is no more or less than the quondam crack, bred at Burghley and brought up at Newmarket. The flying fencer and all perfect hunter, with the pluck of a pugilist, and the sagacity of a senator, who twists and turns at every movement of the finger, and outdoubles the dodging of a riot-running puppy, is the self-same nag that, two years since, you'd have shuddered to saddle for more than eight stone seven, or stripped on any course without a fine straight run in. Nay that accommodation to circumstance shall carry him through, even over this boundary, so that the fit of a whinker bridle, the press of the collar, or the music of the bars, shall come on him as the use of second nature. And then, when Macadamized roads, good loads, welltimed changes and increasing years have placed this state of life too beyond him, the high-mettled racer, "the broken-down" gentleman of the world, shall hark to the "come hither" of the farmer's boy, and ease his battered legs and well-worn frame in the light land and gentle work of an agricultural hemisphere. It is a terrible fall in the scale, certainly; but if, as they say, pace is destruction, and sudden change and excitement but companion evils, this, of all other stages we have yet arrived at, is most free from anything that can "ruffle our poor Hero's temper, or disturb his equanimity.”

When viewed, moreover, in a tolerably fair light, we may begin to question whether, after all, this be so thorough a humiliation, so complete a "bowing down to his fate" as one might at first be led to fancy it. If, at such an era, we had him fixed in the deep heavy fallows with three big, bulky, heavy-heeled, John Jolly class of companions, "all in a row, we might count on his heart being pulled out of him in about three weeks. On the other hand, as it is, the picture looks like a certain cessation of hostilities, a kind of temporary interregnum, during which he may gather health and strength to work up again, or, giving over his "quarter," start once more in the down train. Though we assuredly cannot remember to have seen any real race-horse who intended to "turn again," taking his pleasure at the plough, we have known scores of hunters who have been treated with this kind of relaxation.* Mr. Meansmust, for instance, after having "regularly hunted," as the catalogues say, his horse, of all horses, two days a week for four seasons running, begins to imagine Old Standfast" hobbles the least bit in the world at starting, or has taken a notion for lighting on his head instead of his legs in landing into a road. That respected gentleman, the Vet, with a straight-forwardness which so strongly distinguishes his order from what, in common parlance, are called farriers, prescribes "rest" as the best remedy, and leaves to the worthy owner its due application, Accordingly, with Mr. Meansmust's incomings and outgoings, it runs to this: if he turns friend Standfast out to grass for a summer, he feels assured that the question of queer legs will be quite set at rest by his coming up either blind or broken-winded, or perhaps both. If, in direct opposition, he leans to loose boxes, clay

*The late Lord Sefton's favourite hunters-so generally acknowledged as perfect patterns of what the hunter in condition should be—were frequently favoured with a summering of this sort,

bottoms, and the three or four-course system of drug cultivation, statistics show him that, in addition to the time thrown away and labour lost, it will cost almost as much as the price of a new one. If, again, he claps him into gig harness, and takes the summer run out in that fashion, extending him for the big places becomes a fact rather farther removed than ever. In short, he finds out in time, as the reader has long since, that the only plan is to make him odd man, or odd horse, if you please, on the home-farm; a little light harrow in sowing time; ditto bush-harrow in spring time; a couple of sacks of corn to the windmill, or a couple of hours' work instead at one of our own on the premises. That's the recipe to keep the condition and save the pins : a little gentleman farmering, but nothing more; and so in a few short months shall he shine again with the buck-hounds, or set the field at the post and rails into what once was the great North Road. Avaunt, then, with our bewailings and forebodings! the tide may turn yet, and the Hero, after the nursing and quiet of our ninth chapter, takes his place once more in the twelve-stall stable, or pilot them along at a used-up" weight in the next Grand National.

For another variety of those labours the high-mettled has more lately had a share in, the farm was a still more common restorative. In the merry times when coaching paid its way, and coachmasters found their own straw and threshed their own corn, the one or two hundred acres were generally worked by these semi-invalids. If the brown mare hit her leg, or the young horse had gone a little off at all points, down they went to the farm for a week or a month or two, and Grey Surrey, whose curb had succumbed to rest and blister, and the Pytchley horse with the weak hocks came back for a time to reign in their stead. Consequently, we may retrace, even by the mere force of precedent, every stage of our journey up again. Who shall determine yet what the Hero is being patched up for ?-Another turn in the mail? or shall the guard's horn lead on iterum, iterum, iterumque, to the hunter's and the cry of hounds? Farther even than this could not the thoroughbred horse who had tilled the land find some sort of example to meet his fellows with? Aye! even at Newmarket, above all other localities, where we remember seeing Lord Lowther's picked stud of brood mares in regular work on the Links farm. We shall never say die, then, here, but fight out the old vessel with a good heart, and a strong hope still for better times.

"Nevertheless, notwithstanding" the comparative easiness of the place, and advantages appertaining to it, the High-Mettled Racer has here to bear up against a certain contempt and ridicule on his pride of birth, that the service of the road or the field would never have occasioned him. The heavy-headed, purple-cheeked, pig-eyed Clodpole, who sticks his knot of whip-cord into his hat at fair time, and thinks a plough-boy the finest animal in creation, can't help giving vent to that fling the full-fed vulgar are so prone to take at a fallen gentleman. "He who has fat drivers should himself be fat," says Chaw-Bacon, who has gradually been led to believe grease and garbage the safest signs of true greatness, and so off he cuts his ponderous "chaff" in this wise : "Why, dang it! Jemmy, what has't got there? A raw-boned racer, blow'd if it aint !"