in array behind them which give a nice finishing and official touch to the family party. The Royal party were very difficult to know about, in consequence of four or five being dressed alike in mauve and white, and the admirers of the old Court had every reason to be proud of its representative in the Princess Teck. Thorwaldsen took his canter with a stride and vigour which ought to have made the little horse a better favourite than he was. It was by no means five points between him and St. Mungo, as the Saint was big, and sweated after his canter, both on the neck and between the legs, as if they had loth to send him along until it was nearer Newcastle time. This break down was a very painful one to look at, as he could just touch the ground with the point of his toe, and there he limped away literally with " a wheelup"-a sad transition from one of the best stayers in the kingdom to the most helpless. Pero Gomez looked as if he had done a good deal of work since Epsom, and so did Martyrdom, with the pretty forehand. Plaudit has evidently done about as much as he did in the days of the policeman and the bulldog, when he went sobbing behind Lozenge, and Roscicrucian was decidedly hurried. It is doubtful whether he will ever take a thorough preparation. King Victor was very neat, but Lumbey's high-held stag-like neck suggests the idea of non-staying. Thormanby had a great day with three winners, but there his Ascot luck ceased. Among the jockeys Fordham had an immense run, whereas Challoner was not credited with one race all the week. The first off day had plenty of surprises, to set off against its Martinique, See Saw, and Pero Gomez certainties. Frivolity won the rubber with Pâté; but Sir Tatton has unfortunately nothing out of her dam for Doncaster this year. He likes the sort so much, that he made a good bid for Wild Agnes by Wild Dayrell, and her Chevalier D'In dustrie foal. Alpenstock, upon whom Custance inflicted the whip to good purpose, and Mahonia, who just knocked over the Kingcraft pot by a head, were also most grateful adjutants to the fielders. Ryshworth, his first appearance after his French trip, ran second to Alpenstock, but Maidment, the "Kentish Churchwarden," was not up, and the wags said that he had been summoned for admonition and corection to the Bishop of Rochester. One paper has learnt that he holds that office as a representative of the high ritualistic party, for which the many different coloured silks he wears on his back in a week most eminently qualify him in these church millinery days.

The weather on Thursday was much colder, but that stopped nobody. Vans and carriages were drawn up right down to the turn, and the Grand Stand enclosure was one mass of black hats and birds' nests. Every one seemed to be there; but in the crush nobody seemed to see anybody. We cannot describe it more lucidly. Many were so weary of the pressure that when they once got into the saddling enclosure they left it no more. Dunbar was a fine rough outsider for the St. Leger, and what with See Saw's victory on Wednesday, and the 1,800 gs. at Middle Park as well, the Margery Daw family may well be popular just now. Badsworth seemed quite "big;" Brigantine could have borne some more flesh on her bones; and Blue Gown has not made nearly the same advance with age that Formosa has done, although we have seen the mare look better. It is the first time that we remember a St. Leger, Derby, and Oaks winner coming together in

this race. Many thought Brigantine too light for her work, and she hardly looked up to her Oaks form. Up the hill the second time Thorwaldsen was going as strong as a lion, and people must know very little about it who think that Wells did not move soon enough with Blue Gown. We saw him come, and we never thought that his horse would have landed as well home as he did. The result makes Thorwaldsen, over Ascot at least (where every pound tells), as good as him at 16lbs. The New Stakes, as usual, had apparently no flyer in it, as 5lb. stopped the Blue Bell colt, as it did his sire before him.

The sales were dull work, and people cared more to get a peep at poor St. Mungo in his slings. Some Diophantuses were truly awful, and a Frederick (by Melbourne) colt as handsome as anything we have seen this year. He was bought in at 65 gs., and his two-year-old halfsister had made such a well-meant leap over a hedge and cut herself about so much that she could not appear.

The news from Acton was not of a very re-assuring nature to breeders, and there has seldom been a duller sort of sale than the Royal one this year. The report of the various committees of inspection was decidedly in favour of the fillies, and the twenty-seven lots as a whole were inferior to those of other years, although they may have what passeth show. The stallion boxes were crowded whenever they were opened; but there was no Orlando to turn round his dim eye and quality neck upon his annual levée, as if to challenge scrutiny as to whether his muscle had wasted. They have no foals by him this year; but the yearling sister to Imaus brought him to the head of the poll at 420 gs. in this his last Hampton essay. Mentmore has still the same big ends and wasp-like middle, which is covered, as it were, with snow-flakes. Melbourne looked a great rattling horse, with a pleasant, honest head, and his off fore-hoof expanded into quite a Chinese boot. They hardly dare give him hay or corn, as he gets so fat, and they are afraid of feeding him off his legs. Home produce has come back in the shape of the dark chesnut Cambuscan; but he was always a delicate "chance horse," as the trainers phrase it, and we cannot see what they can want him for. His old opponent Ely thickens out; but he has only had twelve mares this year, and so far he has not made much way. A change for the better has evidently taken place in the St. Albans's temper; but he is still in his padded chamber. We always look at him with great respect, as he won a St. Leger with Buccaneer and Thormanby behind him, which makes the year only inferior to that of 1836, when Gladiator, Slane, and Venison stayed up Bay Middleton for the St. Leger. His mare-list has been very full, and no horse gets his stock more to race and stay.

The whole thing was dull; but those who knew where to find the mares could have seen some Savernake foals. At the luncheon there were many blank places, and more at the ring side, where the one solitary "plunger" of other days never opened his mouth. Mr. Merry and Mr. Chaplin were not there; but Count Batthyany was in close confab with John Dawson, and looking as keen as he always does on these occasions. Mr. Harry Hill was almost silent with his quips and his jokes, and professed with a melancholy head-shake that 120 gs. was a bid which he dare not grapple with. Those who sat on the rail stuck to the tar thereof, and we had some difficulty in extricating a writer

who desired to be helped down. There was scarcely, so to speak, a lively bout of bidding. John Day, cigar in mouth, once drove things along a little; but few except the Count seemed in real earnest, and the Pretender party would not take punishment at all. At last 157 gs. was the average for twenty-seven, and quite as much as they seemed to be worth. The Mamheads were taken next on Hampton Green, without much delay; but speculation was very dead, and as good a looking bay colt as a man need see, by Stockwell from Queen of Beauty, would only make 200 gs.

Lord Portsmouth's average was saved by the St. Albanses at 400 gs. and 500 gs.; but Mr. Chirnside was quite on the wrong side for three foals, which he bought at Mr. Jackson's for 480 gs., and sold after nine months' keep for 355 gs. Curiously enough, Mr. Blenkiron gave 580 gs. for three, and just made that amount. At the Middle Park sale last year one Sister to Hermit made 1,000 gs., and two jointly 2,100 gs. This year 1,800 gs. and 1,000 gs., both by Newminster, were the two highest lots at the first sale, and the average fifty-two at 243 gs., against forty-seven at 296 gs., and forty-two at 466 gs. in the two previous years respectively. Nine lots out of fifty-two were from Birdcatcher mares, and five from Touchstone. Saunterer and Gladiateur were level with a 600 gs. lot, and the highest three of each averaged 460 gs. and 463 gs. respectively. A Dundee made 400 gs., a Blair Athol 330 gs., a King John 200 gs., a Buccaneer 520 gs., a St. Albans 650 gs., and a Marsyas, brother to Pearl Diver, 310 gs. The Jockey Club have done well to make the Middle Park Plate perpetual and preserve the name. Achievement, Formosa, and Pretender were in the first four in consecutive years.

There is nothing like contrast, and certainly we had it when a lapse of forty hours found us on the Hawick Common, vice Ascot Heath. It is a very fair course, two miles or more from the town, up some steep hills, but spectators are well fitted when they have toiled there. The tents are on the side of a hill, and there is a large mound flanking a portion of the run in, which is about 350 yards. The course itself is an oval, and fifty or sixty pounds laid out on it would work wonders. The Cornet, a young man in a bottle-green coat and a red sash (with an aide-de-camp minus the sash), is the great man of the revels, and is supposed to be selected as being the most popular Hawick youth of the period. This year he was a Mr. Burns, the son of a deceased innkeeper. He gives a breakfast, and he rides the bounds, and those who don't breakfast and ride them with him or his "father" cannot run in races for "the Cornet and his lads" or for the "Silver Cup presented by the Hawick callants in America to be run for by the Cornet and his men." The Cornet entered one horse "Not for Joseph," and rode himself in one race, but alas! the saddle turned round, and he bit the dust. Messrs. Weatherby handicap, and Easby and Quality were well-known names. Bay Leaf, trained near Hoddam Tower, won a race each day; and on the second there was a beautiful finish for the Hunters' Stake between The Rap (Mr. Cunningham) and Mr. T. Brown's Clifton (owner), who came with a rush and nearly landed the old Ramsay colours. Joe Graham was of course there, and won the Operatives' Purse with a chesnut filly, Harvest Home. Between the races the Cornet's men decided no end of matches, and we had horses with tails

going like pump-handles, and all over the course like "waves which know no track" at the finish. The dogs seemed to enjoy the thing amazingly. In one of the couplet races a colly ran with each horse, and a brindled bull-terrier might be seen at the starting-post, then starting across the valley to the other side, and then back to the post to meet the horses again. One old fellow, "Stilty," with one leg, one eye, and on crutches, who worked his way to the Derby in Blue Gown's year and came back with £2 for card money, crutched it there and back. It is said that "Stilty" journeys full length under the seat in a first class, but at all events he always seems cheerful, and resides at times with his friend "the Hawick Giant," and he was, when we last saw him, on the Hawick platform wanting to back The Sky with those worthy Scots who keep their fast day by starting off on picnics. The peculiarity of Hawick racing is that it begins at 10.30, and is all over just when ordinary meetings are beginning. The people got back between two and three to dine, and at nearly five they sallied out again to the Haugh Close, hard by the town, to see the gymnastic games. The running and jumping were good, but the wrestling very poor. Every one was afraid of the noted Dick Wright, who looks rather like Tom Sayers in his best day, and is still quite active on those gartered legs, though he has seen forty summers. A man about half-a-stone heavier had the three last falls with him, one of which Dick lost. The other man wouldn't make play throughout, as he had very little science, and knew that Dick would have him. Some Welshers arrived, and one of them, who owed £3 10s., ran for Stobs Station. Two Hawick creditors took train at Hawick, and caught him just as he was joining their train, and brought him in custody back to the town; where a dividend of about 15s. 4d. was declared, after turning out his pockets, and he had to walk home 45 miles as he could.

A lover of swimming sends us the following: "While our ex-champion and his little one, self-styled The Beckwith Frogs,' eat, drink, and smoke under water in a glass tank at Cremorne, the champion swimmer of England, little Harry Gurr, has been favouring Brother Jonathan with similar subaqueous performances. The fact of our best swimmers taking to aquariums would seem to imply that the art of swimming has sunk in public estimation. True there are now and then a few races in the miserable basins which serve as baths for Londoners, and we read in Bell occasionally of a contest in the Serpentine and in the Thames. Every lover, however, of the most exhilirating of manly exercises must long for a revival of the period when Beckwith and Mather, or the invincible Gurr, drew fleets of craft to witness the wondrous celerity with which the splendid side-strokes of the former, and the peculiar screw-strokes of the latter, enabled them to spin along the two-mile course like aquatic velocipedes; when a sixteen-stone leviathan from the country beat the cracks of town in a nine-mile swim from Teddington to Barnes; and when the most graceful of breastswimmers, Henry Coulter, won a plucky race from the mouth of the Medway to the Nore Light ship, riding bravely over the waves like a buoyant racing boat, and gaining the welcome beacon of distressed mariners some half-hour before his rival, a tough tar of her Majesty's navy, who had come to anchor ashore as a Sheerness boniface. There is one suggestion which may be made here, and which, if adopted, may

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take swimming out of its present Slough of Despond, so to speak, and place it in the "silent highway to success-Why don't Oxford and Cambridge have an inter-university swimming race? The Cam and the Isis can boast of excellent swimmers, whose skill is developed by the yearly competitions which take place; and we know of many silent river reaches, where the steamboats cease from troubling, and the minds of the competing captains might be at rest-so far as being run down by troublesome tugs is concerned. Let the athletic representatives of Oxford and Cambridge set the example, then, by having annual contests in as well as on the river; and, as the University boatrace has given an immense impulse to boating, so would the swimming contest make an even more beneficial and useful pastime as popular with the gregarious young men of the day."

Of greyhounds there is very little to note. Master M'Grath has paid a formal visit to the home of his puppyhood, and has been received, like a victorious christian, with bonfires and triumphal arches. A puppy in the last litter of his own brothers and sisters is said to have his neck-mark to a nicety. The dam of Lobelia has gone to King Death, so as to get as near the Seafoam nick as possible, and we hear that Coodareena has not been in season. Old Canaradzo is still alive, and not far short of eleven years. He is just a year younger, almost to a day, than the great king bull of England, Royal Butterfly. Now that The Cure and Weatherbit are gone, Surplice must hold the place of senior among leading blood sires.

A friend writes us as follows: "It seems the fate of almost every new invention to be well abused, and certainly the velocipede forms no exception to the rule. One may call it an invention, as though a machine of the same nature existed many years ago, yet the present bicycle is to all intents and purposes a novelty. The men who imprisoned Galileo, and later on ridiculed Stephenson, have left plenty of descendants who scout the idea of the velocipede ever becoming a recognised mode of locomotion, and object to "make fools of themselves"-frequently a work of supererogation -by giving it a trial. In spite of all this hostility, however, the machine is firmly established in France and America, and is rapidly gaining ground in this country. Already two or three Civil Servants have obtained leave from the authorities to stable their iron steeds in Somerset House, and may be seen bowling down the Strand about ten o'clock each morning. They live some distance out of town, and the saving in railway fare soon pays for the velocipede. The journey is very pleasant on a fine day, with the exception of the last mile or so, where the streets are very crowded. Even then there is not much trouble, as the machines will twist and turn instantaneously, and the only difficulty arises from the fact that, owing to their construction, they will not remain upright when stationary, and therefore, if a check occurs, the rider must either dismount, or turn into a bye street, and work up and down it until a road is clear again. This, the only drawback, would be overcome in a great measure, if velocipedes could be ridden through the parks; but for some wise reason the gates are closed against them, though it is difficult to perceive what harm they could do, and, at any rate, there would be no horses to frighten. Of course some parts of the parks, the Row for example, are already