REVOLUTION IN TRAINING. 135 



fit to run, as the phrase has it, " for a man's life," 

 two or three weeks before the day when his race 

 is due. To keep a horse at concert -pitch for 

 twenty, or even for fourteen days, will try the 

 skill of the very ablest trainer. I may add, at the 

 end of a long life, that I could never have gone 

 through what I did at Goodwood, between 1841 

 and 1848, but for the constant support and en- 

 couragement so generously accorded to me by my 

 two noble masters, the fifth Duke of Richmond 

 and Lord George Bentinck. 



The construction and wide extension of railways, 

 the facility, rapidity, and safety with which horses 

 are conveyed in boxes to the scene of action and 

 back to their training stables, and lastly, the elec- 

 tric wire, have revolutionised the whole system of 

 racing and of training, early maturity and quick 

 returns being at present the order of the day. 

 Nowadays a vast majority of horses terminate 

 their racing careers at an age at which they com- 

 menced it in my youth, the result being that mod- 

 ern trainers are subjected to much less work and 

 much less anxiety than their predecessors under- 

 went. Such, moreover, is the richness of the prizes 

 now within reach of a good horse during the first 

 two years of his racing career, that enormously in- 

 creased prices are given for thoroughbreds of all 

 ages, although in my opinion these prices cannot 

 and will not be sustained. Lord George Bentinck 

 was one of the first to pay long prices for horses. 



