MR. SFOXGE'S SPORTING TOUR. 



405 



VINEY AMD MB. WATCHORN GETTING UP 

 < ; I : A ND ARISTOCRATIC." 



CHAPTER LTX. 



HOW THE GRAND ARISTOCRATIC CAME OFF. 



STEEPLE- 

 CHASES are 

 Sen e r a 1 1 y 

 crude, ill-ar- 

 ranged things. 

 Few sports- 

 men will act 

 as stewards a 

 second time ; 

 while the vic- 

 tim to the po- 

 pular delusion 

 of patronising 

 our "national 

 sports " con- 

 siders — like 

 g e n 1 1 e m e n 

 who have served the office of sheriff, or churchwarden — that once 

 in a lifetime is enough ; hence, there is always the air of amateur 

 actorship ahout them. There is always something wanting or for- 

 gotten. Either they forget the ropes, or they forget the scales, or 

 they forget the weights, or they forget the bell, or — more commonly 

 still — some of the parties forget themselves. Farmers, too, are 

 easily satisfied with the benefits of an irresponsible mob careering 

 over their farms, even though some of them are attired in the mis- 

 cellaneous garb of hunting and racing costume. Indeed, it is just 

 this mixture of two sports that spoils both ; steeple-chasing being 

 neither hunting nor racing. It has not the wild excitement of the 

 one, nor the accurate calculating qualities of the other. The very 

 horses have a peculiar air about them — neither hunters nor hacks, 

 nor yet exactly race-horses. Some of them, doubtless, are fine, 

 good-looking, well-conditioned animals ; but the majority are lean, 

 lathy, sunken-eyed, woe-begone, iron-marked, desperately-abused 

 brutes, lacking all the lively energy that characterises the move- 

 ments of the up-to-the-mark hunter. In the early days of steeple- 

 chasing a popular fiction existed that the horses were, hunters ; 

 and grooms and fellows used to come nicking and grinning up to 

 masters of hounds at checks and critical times, requesting them 

 to note that they were out, in order to ask for certificates of the 

 horses having been "regularly hunted," — a species of regularity than. 



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