epso:m downs on the derby day. 



WnAT a theme for pen and pencil ! -what scope for description aud fiuc writing ! what 

 light and shade ! what colour ! what scenes of joy and sorrow, wealth aud luxury, 

 poverty and misery. Yes, here is a chance indeed, and we could fill not a couple of pages, 

 but a whole volume with the theme. Those "huts" and "ifs" are queer customers some- 

 times, and as awkward to get over as a douLle, or a brook with rotten banks aud no bottom. 

 This Mord-painting has, unfortunately, all been done before. After the host of writers, great 

 and small, from the mighty Dickens himself to the humblest pcnny-a-liner, have aii-ed 

 their pens and exhausted their brains over the Derby Day, how shall wo hope to say any- 

 thiug new on the subject ? Has not the road down, the road home, the feasting, the 

 fighting, the fun, and the fashion been done year by year, from the time that ovu' parents 

 were in swaddling clothes ? Has not Dickens penetrated even into the awful mysteries 

 of the kitchen department, and told us how luncheons are manufactured for the invading 

 host ; nay. the very wine and beer-sellers, and — icrra incognita ta all but the favoured 

 few — the "offices of the clerk of the course himself. Hear what he says on the subject : — 

 "Here we are! Let us get into the basement. First into the weighing-house, where 

 the jockeys ' come to scale ' after each race. We then inspect the offices for the Clerk of 

 the Course himself : wine cellars, beer cellars, larders, sculleries and kitchens, all as 

 gigantically appointed and as copiously fimiished as if they formed part of an Ogres' 

 Castle. To fm-nish the Eefreshment Saloon, the Grand Stand has in store ten-thousand 

 four hundred tumblers, one thousand two hundred wine glasses, thi-ee thousand plates 

 and dishes, and several of the most elegant vases we have seen out of the Glass Palace, 

 decorated with artificial flowers. An exciting odom- of cookery meets us iu our descent. 

 Eowsof spits are turniugrows of joints before blazing walls of fii-e. Cooks are trussing fowls, 

 confectioners are making jellies, kitchenmaids are plucking pigeons, huge crates of 

 boiled tongues are being garnished on dishes. One hundred and thirty legs of lamb, sixty- 

 five saddles of lamb, and one hundred and thirty shoiilders of lamb ; in short, a whole 

 flock of sixty-five lambs have to be roasted, and dished, and garnished by the Derby Day. 

 TAventy rounds of beef, four hundred lobsters, one hundred and fifty fillets of veal, one 

 hundred sirloins of beef, five hundred spring chickens, three hundred and fifty pigeon 

 pics ; a countless number of quartern loaves, and an incredible quantity of ham to be cut 

 u]) into sandwiches ; eight hundred eggs have got to be boiled for the pigeon pies and 

 salads. The forests of lettuces, the acres of cress and beds of radishes which will have to be 

 chopped up, the gallons of " dressing " that will have to be jDoured out and converted 

 into salads for the insatiable Derby Day, will be best imderstood by a mcmorandmu from 

 the chief of that department to the chcf-de-cuisine, which happened accidentally to fall 

 under om- notice : — 'Pray don't forget a large tub and a birch-broom for mixing the 

 salad !' " "We can only exclaim with Dominie Sampson, " Prodigious !" and thank our 

 fates that we have never been called upon to witness these monster gastronomic prepara- 

 tions. Little as wc care for the crush and crowd of the ring, with its deafening 

 clamour, we would rather face it ten times over than such a scene. How refreshing to 

 turn from this to a slight description of luncheon in Mr. Todd Hcatley's stand, peimed 

 now nearly a decade since by a writer who is as great in sketching sporting scenes as 

 Dickens is in the higher walks of art : — Ey the well known wine merchant "the whole 

 formula of racing luncheons has been happily changed, and the conventional fowl and ham 

 and cold lamb has given way to curries fit for a governor-general, cpces of trout, and salads 

 that transplant one to the Palais Eoyale. But these comestibles, of coiu'se, rcciuire 

 washing down ; and to supply this want an idea worthy of Sir Joseph Paxtou at 



