198 The Post and the Paddock. 



in the withers, straight in the shoulders, short, and 

 upright in the pasterns, small-footed, calf-kneed, and 

 only sixty-three inches in the girth when he won the 

 Derby. With all these so-called racing defects, he 

 looked a racehorse every inch of him. His head and 

 neck were especially game and blood-like ; but the 

 great secret of his rare racing power lay in his high 

 muscular loins, which sent him along the flat and up 

 the hill like a hare. It was glorious to see Wells let 

 Virago go at the Stand for the Great Metropolitan, 

 but it was nothing to the style in which the little 

 chestnut answered to the whip when "Job," with 

 whip and heel, called on him to collar Kingston, who 

 was then in his prime, for the Doncaster Cup, or the 

 almost electric burst of speed with which he darted 

 on to Stockwell, and then swerving from desperate 

 distress while giving Qlbs. to a horse half as powerful 

 again up the Ascot Hill, came a second time, and 

 beat him a head on the post. Somehow or other, 

 when we see a horse strike well out with the off hind 

 leg, we always fancy that he means going, and this 

 peculiarity was an especial characteristic of Tedding 

 ton and Rifleman. 



It is a common excuse for horses of no great run- 

 ning powers, that they have failed in the stud simply 

 for the lack of having picked mares put to them. 

 Merit will, however, be generally served in this, as 

 in everything else ; and glancing over a twenty years' 

 list of great winners, we do not recognise more than 

 thirty of them as high-class stud names. Perhaps 

 the most distinguished cluster of future stud cracks 

 came to the fore in the Derby of 1836, when Gla- 

 diator, Venison, and Slane finished behind Bay 

 Middleton; and in the St. Leger of 1829, when 

 Voltaire, with Sir Hercules at his quarters, all but 

 reached Rowton on the post. The finish for the 

 latter race in 1849, between The Dutchman, Nunny- 

 kirk, and Vatican, also showed us three elegant but 



