HORSE RACING- DENNIS O'KEJLLY. 35 



from the employment of a number of people in the various branches, as jockies, 

 grooms, stable attendants, and manufacturers of the indispensible articles of 'use 

 and convenience, appertaining to the concern. An attachment to this sport forms 

 a prominent and interesting, shall we say, classical feature in the English mind ? 

 This Sport of the princely and the noble, originally fostered by Royalty, has a 

 universal popular attraction among us, filling every place, at its periodical return, 

 with the bustle and activity of pleasure, starting the mare of circulation, making 

 her to go, and infusing commercial life and health throughout its course. It also 

 affords a gainful, although it must be acknowledged, hazardous profession for those 

 who have need to acquire wealth, as well as an enchanting medium of dissipation 

 for others, whose object it is to rid themselves of the surplus of that already in pos- 

 session. Can it be questioned, that glorious HORSE RACING sharpens the wits of 

 the most obtuse, brightening up and pointing- even clodhopping and Bceotian 

 dullness ? All grooming must give place to that of the RUNNING STABLES, where 

 the care and management of the horse is comprehended and practised, in all the 

 refinements of both delicacy and utility. On the morality of the Turf, and its 

 effect on the mind arid conduct of those engaged thereon, did we mean to flatter, 

 mum would be the order of our page but that may be reformed, which cannot, 

 and ought not, to be abolished. There is a wide interval between the exercise of 

 talent in legitimate and allowable stratagem, and that of barbarous and swind- 

 ling fraud. 



Dennis O' Kelly, Esq. on this occasion, the hero of our little tale, died either a 

 captain, or colonel, of the Surrey Militia. He was a true Milesian, and of that 

 naturally-privileged class, born for jontlemen, although not gentlemen -born. He 

 possessed that kind of talent, industry, patience, and assurance, which are gene- 

 rally sure to promote a man's views of rising in life it was Whiltington and his 

 Cat, O'Kellij and his Horse. Of his genealogy we profess to know nothing, or 

 the precise period at which he left Ireland, and found his way to this country upon 

 the seek. Nor is it important to determine, in what character he made his debut 

 sur la pave de Londres, and whether as a chairman or a waiter ; but we knew the 

 man personally in his prosperity ; and, in our mind's eye, we now behold him as 

 he stood, the oracle of the betting ring, on Epsom Downs, in the year 1779 a 

 short, thickset, dark, harsh-visaged, and ruffian -looking fellow, wearing an old 

 round" hat and short, striped Orleans coat. Through this unfavourable exterior 

 shone the ease, the agremcns, the manners of a gentleman, and the attractive 

 quaintness of a humourist. We saw him converse with the gentle and the noble 

 of this and other countries, with the tournure and decorous confidence of gentility, 

 and could not help admiring the man, who, from the lowest beginnings, had, 

 by mere dint of talent and diligence, elevated himself to such a height of fortune, 

 iii the meanwhile, having qualified himself to enjoy his property with so good a 

 grace. He was a good and kind master to both men and horses; a hearty and 



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