2 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



to wonder at the vigour with which our officers 

 " set-to" on their Arabs beneath the rock of Gib- 

 raltar or the minarets of Calcutta. The races, 

 paper hunts, and steeple-chases on the Tchernaya 

 and at Shurnla, will be engraven on the retinas of 

 Cossack, Turk, and Sardinian for many a year to 

 come ; and even when the horrors of the first winter 

 before Sebastopol were barely over, officers were 

 writing home about nominations for the Grand 

 Military at Leamington. Both our Jockey Club 

 and Tattersall's are reproduced at the Antipodes, 

 whose race-courses, pastern-deep in the erica, the 

 heath, the wild strawberry, the rich-scented dwarf- 

 acacia, and all the countless varieties of the world 

 of flowers, contrast strangely with the " hard- 

 going,^ which breaks down the West Australians 

 and the Wild Dayrells of the old country. The 

 abstract fame of our race-horses is also rife in hemis- 

 pheres where "Ruff" is still unknown. On this 

 point we have the positive assurance of a Transat- 

 lantic Rambler, that the only artifice by which he 

 could disperse an extempore procession of street 

 boys, and pacify a Brazilian landlord, on whose 

 shaggy pony he had been compelled to confer a 

 racing tail in his travels, was, by assuring him in his 

 most polished Portuguese, that it was now, in all its 

 bearings, " the exact image of the Flying Dutchman 

 the finest horse in England." 



The wonderful success of their St. Leger colts has 

 given Irishmen a still stronger bias towards the turf 

 than they had even in the days when Hark away was 

 the champion of Goodwood and the Curragh. Still 

 steeple-chasing nestles nearest their hearts ; and the 

 remembrance of Brunette and Abd-el-Kader will be 

 green when Faugh-a-Ballagh, The Baron, and Knight 

 of St. George are forgotten. Scotland's pride has 

 been occasionally awakened by the victories of " the 

 tartan " but racing feeling in her has waxed fainter 



