dered many more inviting programmes have been held forth to the visitors of Doncaster, yet the interest excited by some of the principal events will suffer no diminution; and, thanks to the praiseworthy liberality of the Corporation, Doncaster may still hope to maintain the high pre-eminence it has so long held amongst the great racing meetings of the north of England.

August 21.

THE HIGH-METTLED RACER.

PLATE XI.-THE STREET.

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

"Grown aged, used up, and turned out of the stud,

Lame, spavin'd, and wind-galled, but yet with some blood;
While knowing postilions his pedigree trace,

Tell his dam won that sweepstakes, his sire gained that race;

"And what matches he won to the ostlers count o'er,

As they loiter their time at some hedge ale-house door;
While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad,
The High-mettled Racer's a hack on the road."

Appearance proverbially goes a great way everywhere; but perhaps in no place are its virtues so apparent as in the street. The licence of shocking bad hats, easy jackets, and old boots, is one of the chief luxuries of a country life-the déshabille of no neckcloths and no fitting dressing-gowns not the least attractive item in the temptations of sweet home. The line, however, to all this néglige and nonchalance is drawn with the street. Once let the wayfarer jostle the crowd in rags and patches, challenge the gaze in his working suit, and all the pretension and dignity of the man are lost in a moment. In the polish and shine of his best he promenaded the street for pleasure, or fought his way through it, intent on far higher aims than any of its yet manifold occupations could afford. Now" the appearance" proves, the loitering, lounging gait proclaims, he is dependent on the very mob he once despised for his sustenance; turning, like Jack Rag, to a bit of fancy sweeping, or filling the mugs of maid-servants, with a most melancholy-looking mug of his own!

"The life's course of man and steed," as they title it over the water, are much the same in their leading features. The Highmettled Racer has lost all the pride of his appearance; and, ragged and worn, "old, lean, and feeble," touts for shillings or eightpenn'orths openly and earnestly. The dull coat, hard-worn collar, cloth boot, and out-at-elbows ensemble, are clearly not here a matter of choice, but bitter necessity, displayed too in those very scenes on which his former self furnished so striking a contrast. Turn again

to some of the early stages of his career, and picture the Hero in those days, like Lucy Neal's hapless admirer, "passing down the street." Just mark the string of hooded, knee-capped, lamb-tailed thorough-bred horses turning the top of the Haymarket, and clearing a passage down Piccadilly. Look at the young-one. How wonderingly and contemptuously he regards that awful instrument of economic utility-a Brompton 'bus! See how tenderly his tiny attendant soothes and coaxes him to face it; and how carefully and anxiously the head lad on the Welsh pony stays him from backing on that awkward scamp with the hack-cab! And then the effect of such a company! Lord! what are Lord Mayors' carriages or court equipages compared to them! Not a passenger but stops to have another look; and with what respect the very varmint gentleman at the corner of Dover-street ventures to ask whose they are and where they are going! Half-a-dozen foreign ambassadors, or three or four couple of cabinet ministers, should have gone even over the same tuft-hunting territory, without a semblance of "the sensation."

Or the hounds, again. You have seen a pack of fox-hounds coming through a town at that indescribable jog-trot pace to which hounds, huntsmen, and horses so readily accommodate themselves. You have seen the rush to drawing-room windows, street-doors, and upper casements; the curiosity and pleasure which light up every pair of eyes as "the darlings," "the beauties," or "the blazers" pass on. How the nurse-maids chuck up their charges, boardingschool misses smile, and men stare! How interested they become at the "hie, hie!" and crack of the whip, which calls old Commodore out of the pastry-cook's, or stays Caroline and Crafty from their call at the crockery-shop! Some folks fancy a regiment of soldiers or a circus company the finest draw for sight-seers; but we would back a well-turned-out pack of hounds against either.

And the Hero has had his full share of all these street-glory pomps and vanities. Was not he the high-mettled young one that lashed out at his poor brother in No. 999? or "the perfect hunter," placed in the body of the hounds as they wended their way through square and crescent? Remember him, too, in the team. How gaily they came along! How the cheerful, well-matched, even-going four were daily looked for! and what a difference their mere appearance showed between "the road" and "the street!" And "the farn," so dear for the retirement and comparative ease it afforded him-the negligé old coat and light-work stage, where, though soiled and shabby, he could adapt himself to his labour unobserved, and pursue it without publishing his fall and his disgrace. "The shop," however, with all its degradation in name and fact, dragged him forth to open and still humbler toil; while now, asbut the ghost of what he was, stiff and sore-the waterman brings him out to die in "the street"-to smart and starve in a hack-cab; the very last scene, it would appear, of that "noble animal, the horse's," labours, in every country. At least, so affirms the entertaining and prolific Monsieur Dumas, who thus traces the decline of the high-mettled in another clime:

"You are acquainted with the history of the horse, I suppose?'

At the Ponte della Maddalena, where horses ed, there are always persons waiting, who, when a bay the hide and hoofs for thirty carlini, which is the y law. Instead of killing the horse and skinning Pas take him with the skin on, and make the most of has to live. They are sure of getting the skin sooner these are what I mean by dead horses.'

hat can they possibly do with the unfortunate brutes ?'
harness them to the corricoli.'

Those with which I came from Salerno to Naples'the ghosts of horses; spectre steeds, in short.'

-Rey galloped the whole way!'

Iv not? Les mortes vont vite!""

ricoli, then, even goes a point beyond the knacker's; and d not care to dispute as much as to the cab here. With the -bred horse, especially, too weak in frame and strength for or omnibus, it is now very commonly "the last scene of all sad eventful history." A man, armed like Mr. Pickwick, a laudable curiosity and a ready note book, might trace out some romantic cases from the street cabs of London. Indeed, it is very long ago that some gentleman did discover Mameluke, Gleney, and a few more Derby cracks on "the stand." With no at stretch of the imagination, we might picture the indefatigable airer making "a fact" of the Hero, under somewhat similar rcumstances. Mamma, nurse, the two girls, and aunt Jane inside, l our friend in couples with Jarvey on the box. With a long pull, d a strong pull, the old one sets them going, and papa commences he examination :

*

"Fine old horse you have got there, cabman."

"Ah!" Yes, no, or what yon please---laconic and not inviting. "Ah," reiterates the Fare, not exactly knowing how to take it. "Ah, I dare say, now, he's done something better than this in his time?" "Of course he has."

"I'll be bound, if it could be only properly ascertained, he has carried a gentleman-eh?"

"Done a d-n'd deal better nor that I hope," returns cabby; forced at length by the heinousness of the idea out of his usually quiet propriety."

Some very neat paragraphs, at any rate, went the rounds to this effect; but we believe they were contradicted.