WAGERING ON <ELIS' 79 



from his lordship's lips, Glen, in uttering the words 

 ' Impossible, my lord,' gave an audible portentous coarse 

 sort of sigh or sob, which, like yawning, proved catch- 

 ing. For at the very moment of his expressing his 

 inability to pay, his lordship became like his horse 

 a gaper, and ' gave a sort of superb groan,' an involun- 

 tary expression of which Mr. Disraeli may have been 

 thinking when he made use of the same words. But a 

 disappointment of the kind could not, any more than 

 other annoyances, be brooked by so august a personage ; 

 and his lordship added to the turf a defaulter, and lost 

 his own money. This he did, as some may think, by a 

 refinement of cruelty. For both results might have been 

 averted, but for the imperious way in which he tried to 

 enforce the fulfilment of his moral tenets. 



I have said his lordship was always a heavy bettor, 

 and won largely over Bay Middleton on the Derby, 

 Indeed, he took most of the money. The owner, Lord 

 Jersey, found himself in the pleasing position of being 

 able to win very little, Lord George having forestalled 

 him in every direction, as no doubt he had a perfect 

 right to do. But how, may we ask, did Lord George 

 himself act over the Leger when, as the owner of Elis t 

 he found himself in a similar position? More astute 

 than Lord Jersey had been, he declared that he had 

 been forestalled, and vowed that unless he had what he 

 was pleased to term fair odds laid him to a certain sum 

 and that not a small one against his horse, he should 

 scratch him. Elis, for the St. Leger, was in the same 

 position as Bay Middleton for the Derby ; and the public 

 had as much right to back the one as the other. Yet in 

 this different way of treating the same subject by two 

 equally high-minded noblemen, I have never heard Lord 

 Jersey praised for his straightforward conduct, nor Lojtd. 



