RACING AT THE DAWN OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



339 



in ahead by Buckle's splendid riding in the last few strides. The distance is said 

 to have been done in "about eight minutes and a-half," and the Newmarket people 

 lost fairly heavily, though the betting varied from six to four on Hambletonian to 

 evens. Sir Harry Vane-Tempest determined never to race him again. 



It was not every owner who thus remembered that his favourite thoroughbred 

 was not a mere machine for making money. I fear, in fact, that the advance of the 

 Turf has always been due as much to gambling as to any other single motive, and 

 the clubs of St. James's Street still contain records of those times, which throw an 

 astonishing light on the way men betted upon everything. They betted on the 

 longevity of their own fathers ; on the probability, of Mademoiselle Heinel dancing 

 at the opera ; on Thurlow 

 getting a tellership of the 

 Exchequer for his son ; 

 on the total of the audi- 

 ence at the Pantheon ; 

 five guineas down to re- 

 ceive one hundred if the 

 Duke of Oueensberry dies 

 before half an hour after 

 five in the afternoon of 

 June. 27, 1773 ; a hundred 

 guineas that Lord Derby 

 does not see the next 

 general election ; heavy 

 wagers that Dr. Dodd 

 would be executed within two months, that he would commit suicide, 

 that he would use a pistol for his final act. Politics, of course, opened 

 a large field for a speculation which ranged the compass of existence. Five 

 hundred guineas to ten were laid that none of the Cabinet would be beheaded by 

 that day three years, and the melancholy contingency found a hearty backer even in 

 days when "pro- Boers" were neither born nor thought of. But cards offered the 

 easiest opportunity of all. Walpole used to say that the things best worth finding 

 were the longitude, the philosopher's stone, the Duchess of Kingston's first marriage 

 certificate, the missing books of Livy, and all that Charles James Fox had lost. 

 The atmosphere seemed charged with prodigality. Five thousand pounds were 



By permission of Mr. Somervillc Tattersall. 



Mr. Lcnvther's ''Ambrosia'''' by 

 " Sir Peter Teazle." 





