THE TURF. 
wrong. Independently of trustworthiness, their avoca- 
tion requires a union of the following not every-day 
qualifications : considerable bodily power in a very 
small compass ; much personal intrepidity ; a kind of 
habitual insensibility to provocation, bordering upon 
apathy, which no efforts of an opponent in a race 
can get the better of; and an habitual check upon the 
tongue. Exclusive of the peril with which the actual 
race is attended, his profession lays a heavy tax on the 
constitution. The jockey must not only at times work 
hard, but the hardest of all tasks he must work upon 
an empty stomach. During his preparation for the 
race, he must have the abstinence of an Asiatic ; indeed, 
it too often happens that at meals he can only be a 
spectator we mean during the period of his wasting. 
To sum up all he has to work hard, and to deprive 
himself of every comfort, risking his neck into the 
bargain ; and for what ? Why, for five guineas if he 
wins, and three if he loses a race, although they occa- 
sionally receive handsome presents from the owners of 
winning horses. The famous Pratt, the jockey of the 
no less famous little Gimcrack (of whom, man and horse, 
there is a fine portrait, by Stubbs), rode eleven races 
over the Beacon course in one day ; making, with 
returning to the post on his hack, a distance of eighty- 
eight miles in his saddle : yet what was this when 
compared with the Osbaldeston feat ? 
Of course we must go to Newmarket for the elite of 
this fraternity ; and this reminds us that Francis Buckle 
144 
