BLOOD MARES. 229 



the whole, if they can only keep up a constant suc- 

 cession of fashionable sires, there seems every prospect, 

 as the management is first-rate, of it proving a very 

 fine speculation for the shareholders. We subjoin 

 a list of their stock on the morning of their 1855 

 sale : Thorough-bred sires, 4 ; mares, 60 ; yearlings, 

 42 ; and foals, 38 ; half-bred yearlings, 7; and half- 

 bred foals, 5. Hetman PlatofF and a mare cost them 

 500, and Newminster 1,500 and while the rent of 

 The Dutchman has been raised from 800 to 1,200, 

 the public sent him at his increased fee just twice as 

 many mares as he had in each of the two preceding 

 seasons. 



While these great Rawcliffe Paddocks are instinct 

 with life and enterprise, those at Bishop Burton, 

 which once held the sway in the three Ridings, are 

 all but tenantless. The walk to them from Beverley 

 lost half its beauty in our eyes, from the melancholy 

 assocciations it revived of the olden time, when 

 Squire Watt, in his " truly British " blue coat and 

 bun waistcoat, made thorough-breds his heart's de- 

 light. We left Beverley by the York road, and 

 wended our way through the pleasant common-lands 

 of Westwood, along the side of the race-course. The 

 prospect from the hill opposite the Stand, on the 

 morning we first climbed it, was one that would have 

 softened an anchorite. Just in front of us was the 

 Stand, whose silken jackets and burly crowd with 

 their shouts of " T'oud Squire wins," and " she'll give 

 him ten poond and lick his heed off," had given way 

 for the nonce, to " Sim " and a quiet group of scar- 

 lets, who were awaiting The Holderness, as, with 

 their "many-twinkling feet'' and sterns, they trotted 

 gently up the course. Pretty little Beverley, flanked 

 by its magnificent gothic minster, and coloured here 

 and there with the red-tile roofs so peculiar to this 

 part of Yorkshire, just peeped over the undulating 

 Westwood foreground, and we could not help con- 



