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CHAPTER XIV. 



UPON JOCKEYS. 



Although it is the fashion among the younger generation 

 to imagine that every winner of a handicap who carries an 

 unusually high weight is ' the horse of the century,' it is 

 obviously becoming difficult to apply this high-sounding and 

 hypothetical title to each of the swift succession of animals by 

 which the record of the past has been broken of late years. 

 Within the last decade the title in question has been be- 

 stowed upon eight animals — Rosebery, Isonomy, Barcaldine, 

 Robert the Devil, Foxhall, St. Gatien, St. Simon, and Plaisan- 

 terie — the last five of which established their right to bear the 

 title at the early age of three years. In like manner, we shall 

 probably awaken irritation in the breasts of those who have 

 not been on the Turf for more than a dozen years if we say 

 that there have been many jockeys between 1785 and 1885 

 who were at least the equals of the four or five ' consummate 

 artists ' now lauded and extolled to excess by the contributors 

 to the daily sporting press. There are, to say the truth, certain 

 exercises and accomplishments in which the human frame 

 cannot attain a higher perfection in one age than in another ; 

 and of these the art of jockeyship is undoubtedly one. Simi- 

 larly (if we may use such a comparison), Lord Macaulay tells 

 us, in one of his famous essays, that ' as regards natural religion 

 — revelation being for the moment altogether left out of the 

 question — it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present 

 day is more favourably situated than Thales or Simonides.' 

 Between the perfection of Job Marson's finish upon Nutwith 

 for the Doncaster St. Leger of 1843 and Fred Archer's pre- 



