6 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



coursed without any bidding, to favoured groups by 

 the hour, till the mail bugle was heard in the dis- 

 tance, and the guard and the coachman bustled in, 

 to deliver themselves of the news, and receive " some- 

 thing hot" in exchange. " What's won ?" was in- 

 yariably the first question from April to November -, 

 and Boniface as invariably remarked to the company, 

 " I told you so." For racing news, and, in fact, for 

 every other kind, guards were at that date as good as 

 a telegraph. Only in 1843, a quiet clerical friend 

 remarked to us that he could get no rest all night 

 in one of the Lancashire mails, because the guard 

 would roar out "THE CURE," in reply to some 

 speaker, at nearly every house they passed. He 

 looked seriously into this mystic and somewhat per- 

 sonal pass-word in the morning, and found that a 

 colt of the name had just won the Champagne 

 Stakes ; but even the satisfaction of knowing that 

 sixty miles of querists had been put out of pain, did 

 not atone for being deprived of his night's rest. 



As Mr. Orton has been unable to trace the ac- 

 counts of York races further back than 1709, we 

 may presume to fix that as the year of turf memory. 

 Under Henry II/s auspices, the fame of Epsom 

 faintly dawned, while Smithfield became resonant 

 with the hoarse yells of both spectators and jockeys, 

 as "the hackneys and charging horses" ran their 

 matches of an afternoon. Before Henry VIII.'s, or 

 rather James I/s reign, races were not placed on a re- 

 gular footing. Turks, Arabs, and Barbs then began to 

 scatter their image over the land ; but their luckless 

 juniors found themselves in a rough world, if we are 

 to judge from the volume of maxims which a horse- 

 breaker of the Elizabethan age published in Nor- 

 folk. " If a horse does not stand still or hezitates/' 

 he observes, " then al rate him with a terrible voyce, 

 and beate him yourself with a good sticke, upon the 

 head, between the ears; then stick him in the 



