76 The Post and the Paddock. 



its charm for those who love the traditions of the 

 past. " It was here," says the author of Historic 

 Fancies, "that the Duke of his day felt a much 

 greater excitement than in chasing the rebels at Cul- 

 loden ; here that Junius Duke of Grafton when Prime 

 Minister, would come with that fair lady for whom 

 he had abandoned that fairer Duchess whom Chauve- 

 lin had so adored ; here that a quarter of a century 

 before Walpole had won Cups with more pleasure 

 than he was to wear a coronet ; here that his 

 great rival felt all that interest in racing, which 

 produced his charming paper on Newmarket in the 

 World." 



At the very time when this great beetle-digging 

 match came off over its Bunbury Course, the Racing 

 Club of the " little town in Suffolk" was in its very 

 heyday of renown. The ink with which Boswell 

 had chronicled its glories was scarcely dry when he 

 became acquainted with Dr. Johnson ; and if the 

 grave had not but just claimed him, the incidents of 

 another five-and-twenty years might now have fur- 

 nished him with ample materials for an additional 

 canto. He would not have failed to sing how pow- 

 der and pigtails were seen there no more, and how 

 the solemn league and covenant, which was entered 

 into and carried out on a perfect field-day of cutting 

 and combing in the powder-room at Woburn Abbey, 

 had wrought this wondrous change. The troubled 

 state of the continent prevented the patrons of racing 

 from roving away in quest of Parisian novelties and 

 Italian skies ; and hence the axle-trees of the Ches- 

 terford post-chaises were seldom allowed to cool 

 during seven months of the year. Nearly every 

 trainer was a private one, and out of the three or 

 four hundred nags who (until Robson introduced the 

 eight o'clock plan) took their breathings at four in 

 the morning and four in the afternoon, at least half 

 were stout enough to be matched at high weights 



