430 MB. SPONGE'S SPOBTING TOUB. 



" secret tips," and market rigging. Who will deny the benefit 

 that must accrue to any locality by the infusion of all the loose 

 fish of the kingdom ? 



Formerly the prize-fights were the perquisite of the publicans. 

 They it was who arranged for Shaggy Tom to pound Hairy Billy's 

 nob upon So-and-so's land, the preference being given to the 

 locality that subscribed the most money to the fight. Since the 

 decline of " the ring," steeple-chasing, and that still smaller grade 

 of gambling — coursing, have come to their aid. Nine-tenths of 

 the steeple-chases and coursing-matches are got up by innkeepers, 

 for the good of their houses. Some of the town publicans, indeed, 

 seem to think that the country was just made for their matches to 

 come off in, and scarcely condescend to ask the leave of the land- 

 owners. We saw an advertisement the other day, where a low 

 publican, in a manufacturing town, assured the subscribers to his 

 coursing-club that he would take care to select open ground, with 

 " plenty of stout hares," as if all the estates in the neighbourhood 

 were at his command. Another advertised a steeple-chase in the 

 centre of a good hunting country — "amateur and gentleman 

 riders " — with a half-crown ordinary at the end ! Fancy the 

 respectability of a steeple-chase, with a half-crown ordinary at the 

 end ! 



Our " Aristocratic " was got up on the good-of-the-house 

 principle. Whatever benefit the Granddiddle Junction conferred 

 upon the country at large, it had a very prejudicial effect upon the 

 Old Duke of Cumberland Hotel and Posting-House, which it left, 

 high and dry, at an angle, sufficiently near to be tantalised by the 

 whirr and the whistle of the trains, and yet too far off to be 

 benefited by the parties they brought. This once well-accustomed 

 hostelry was kept by one Mr. Viney, a former butler in the 

 Scattercash family, and who still retained the usual "old-and- 

 faithful-servant " entree of Nonsuch House, having his beefsteak 

 and bottle of wine in the steward's room whenever he chose to 

 call. Viney had done good at the Old Duke of Cumberland ; and 

 no one, seeing him " full fig," would recognise, in the solemn 

 grandeur of his stately person, the dirty knife-boy who had filled 

 the place now occupied by the still dirtier Slarkey. But the days 

 of road travelling departed, and Viney, who, beneath the Grecian- 

 columned portico of his country-house-looking hotel, modulated 

 the ovations of his cauliflower head to every description of 

 traveller — from the lordly occupant of the barouche-and-four, down 

 to the humble sitter in a gig — was cut off by one fell swoop from 

 all further traffic. He was extinguished like a gaslight, and the 

 pipe was laid on a fresh line. 



Fortunately Mr. Viney was pretty warm ; he had done pretty 

 well ; and having enjoyed the intimacy of the great " Jeames " of 



