320 STEEPLE-CHASING. 



and had been driven at a fence or two with more or less 

 lucky results. Consequently, after winning a selling hurdle- 

 race one day, he was entered for a steeple-chase on the 

 day following. Unless aided by undeserved good fortune, he 

 fell at some fence the like of which he had never seen. A 

 cry of dangerous fences was at once raised, whereas it was 

 the horse that was dangerous ; for he was set, without any 

 schooling, to do what could only be done with any degree 

 of safety after much patient care had been bestowed upon 

 him. 



The result was, unfortunately, that fences were so cut down 

 that the hurdle-racer could gallop over them. The change is 

 most certainly not popular with riders, who know the dangers 

 of an easy course. Neither is it popular with the best class of 

 owners and trainers. What is the good of assiduously school- 

 ing a chaser over a fair course at home if when he gets to the 

 post in the real race there is no scope for the exercise of the 

 lessons that have been laboriously instilled into him, nothing 

 but a sort of hurdle-race over hurdles of a new pattern that 

 can be galloped over precisely after the fashion of a hurdle- 

 race ? 



The way to restore the popularity of steeple-chasing is 

 obvious. The best class of patrons of the sport have grown 

 indifferent about it, because there is so little work for the 

 real steeple-chaser who can gallop over the Liverpool course 

 to do, and it is not worth while to train and keep him to 

 be cut down over a two-mile course by a horse that could 

 not jump a fair course but can gallop the distance over the 

 fences now in vogue. If there were more chases which a 

 sportsman might reasonably feel an ambition to win, there 

 would doubtless be chasers forthcoming to do battle for 

 them. Such contests must be run over fair- sized fences, 

 and over a distance of ground which is a real test of a 

 horse's stamina and does not bear the same proportion to what 

 a steeple-chase should be as a five-furlong dash does to a rea- 

 sonable race. 



