THE TURF 
to 1. B also bets the odds on the third event, viz. 
(5 to 4)-r-2 = 9i to 2. Now A wins all three; there- 
fore, B wins 24-l-f2 = 5/., which pays what he lost to 
A. The odds that A did not lose these three events 
would be 41 to 4. 
We now dismiss this subject, with no probability of 
our ever returning to it. Although the perusal of 
Xenophon might have made Scipio a hero, we have 
not the slightest intention of manufacturing jockeys by 
any effort of our pen ; and yet we wish we had touched 
on these matters sooner. But why so ? Is it that we 
would rather have been Livy, to have written on the 
grandeur of Rome, than Tacitus on its ill-fated decline ? 
It may be so ; for we are loth to chronicle, in any 
department, our country's dispraise ; but we are not 
without the reflection, that we might have done some- 
thing towards preventing the evils we have had to 
deplore, by exposing the manner in which they have 
accumulated and thriven. That there are objections to 
racing, we do not deny, as, indeed, there are to most of 
the sports which have been invented for the amusement 
of mankind, and few of which can gratify pure bene- 
volence ; but, when honourably conducted, we consider 
the turf as not more objectionable than most others, and 
it has one advantage over almost all now in any mea- 
sure of fashionable repute : it diffuses its pleasures far 
and wide. The owner of race-horses cannot gratify 
his passion for the turf without affording delight to 
thousands upon thousands of the less fortunate of his 
257 
