given rise, are very curious. Many a play, like a man, has acquired a good character by sounding words and lip-professions only. An author will make a well-meaning peer or potentate declaim upon vice or virtue in the abstract, or in cases far removed from common life and every-day occurrences, and gain much credit for the excellent tendency of his drama; while Gay's " Beggar's Opera," which exposes in plain language the disgusting selfishness and utter want of feeling and principle in characters and amid scenes which take place under our very noses, has been more than once hissed off the stage for its immorality! So much for consistency.

For my own part I always loved horse-racing, and even when a child, and the qualities of horses were totally unknown to me, exhibited an incipient propensity for betting by making tiny wagers on the colors of the riders. Since that I have seen many a race, and never found my health, morals, or temper any the worse for so doing. It is a fine sight at all times to look upon a good horse; but to see one of the noblest of a noble species led on to the race-course previous to starting, his polished skin glancing and glistening in the sun as he moves gracefully along, is as glorious a picture of animated nature as a poet or painter would wish

to behold.

What fire and expression in his eye! what a union of strength and beauty in his finely moulded limbs! How light and elastic his step-it seems as if it would scarcely crush the young grass on which he treads. And then to see him matched with another, or others, like himself· The anxiety you feel about the fairness of the start -the quickened pulse and rapid circulation of the blood during the race, and the all-absorbing interest of the final struggle, are indescribable, and I am sorry for those who have never experienced them. But then, cry your moralists, this occasions betting, and betting is gambling. Such a consequence by no means follows; but admit it for the sake of argument. What is this to the gambling that is carried on on 'change, or other high places of Mammon? Is not the cotton trade gambling? Are not manufacturing speculations gambling? And is not the banking system gambling, or something worse? Yet who ever hears of the immorality of those grave concerns? And as for betting, men will bet on some subject or other, and a horse-race is perhaps the very best thing they can exercise their talents upon.

"Most people, till by losing rendered sager,
Will back their own opinions by a wager,"

is true enough, and accordingly men bet on all things-on the death or marriage of their friendson the election of their magistrates-on their own weight, height, or circumference, or the weight, height, or circumference of their neighbors. Then again the consistency of some very good people who look with horror on the betting of a dollar whether one horse runs faster than another, yet who I know invest large sums in lottery experiments-the worst, because the most foolish species of gambling. But the truth is, the world is made up of people who, as Butler says,

"Compound for sins they feel inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to."

A volume composed of the lives or anecdotes of celebrated race horses would be an interesting study to the naturalist, the physiognomist, the craniologist, and the philosopher. A race-horse is an intelligent being, and not a mere machine urged forward by a man upon its back. Some of them are as capricious and fanciful as a fine lady, and some as obstinate and self-willed as a doctor of laws; while others again are equally as sensible and knowing as those who bestride them; and from natural good sense, and long and extensive expe

rience, acquire a fund of practical information and intelligence on racing subjects. In numerous qualities, not only physical but mental, they are infinitely superior to many a biped, whose memoirs are frequently obtruded upon the public in twó volumes octavo; and I have somewhere read an epitaph on one, which shows that I am not alone in my friendly feelings towards these high-spirited animals.

"Here lies entombed beneath this heap of earth,
A gallant horse--whose ancestry or birth,
Though proud, swells not his eulogy: he shone
With genuine worth and virtues all his own.
His generous spirit, that with high disdain
Brook'd not the chiding spur, obey'd the rein:
Meek in his might, though wrong'd, he scorned to deal
Vindictive death-blows from his noble heel;
Sometimes with tame and drooping neck conveyed

The tottering infant or the trembling maid;

With dumb regard his bounteous master viewed,

And told in looks his honest gratitude.

But when the horn's shrill challenge waked the wood,
With ears erect and quivering limbs he stood;
Forward he flew, the vulgar steeds aloof,
The champaign rung beneath his bounding hoof!
Nor cliffs nor chasms his daring course restrain,
And mountains rise and torrents roar in vain.
Sunk is the arch of that aspiring crest,

The mane's proud streamers and the panting breast;
Mangled and mould'ring in one shapeless heap,
Those flashing eyes and thundering nostrils sleep.
Reader, whoe'er thou art, whose manly mind
Bleeds o'er the ashes of thy mortal kind,
Spare but one drop from pity's generous source,
Nor blush to shed it for my gallant horse."

EATING.

-He had not dined;

The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then
We pout upon the morning, are unapt

To give or to forgive; but, when we have stuffed
These pipes and these conveyances of our blood
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls
Than in our priest-like fasts.-Shaks.

VERY true and if old Menenius did not succeed in his application to the inflexible Roman to spare his country, it was not for want of a correct knowledge of the acerbity produced by an empty stomach, and the mollifying effects of good victuals upon the temper; at the same time it presents strange and mortifying images to the mind of the littleness of human nature, and the insignificant causes which are not unfrequently the mainspring of mighty events. "He had not dined," reasons the old man; and to the degree of flatulency and acidity produced in Coriolanus's stomach by his not having done so, Menenius ascribes his rejection of