WEIGHT AND TlilE. 357 



weiglit of 119 lbs. for a six-jear-old, which is a pound more than 

 Southern weight — the perfect facility with which he and his 

 successor Eclipse ran away from every thing that encountered 

 them, demonstrates, that their superiority to all horses of their 

 own day, was as great or greater than it would be to our racers 

 of 1856. 



But as I have said before, there is no evidence of this speed, 

 as described, even of these phenomena ; much less any pretence, 

 that such speed was common to all horses of the day. Far from 

 it. A writer in the London old Sporting Mag., in 1840, in an ar- 

 ticle republished in Wm. T. Porter's American Turf Register, 

 Vol. XI. p. 326, and written avowedly to prove that Eclipse and 

 Flying Childers were the best horses that ever went " on four pas- 

 terns," asserts that were the latter alive now he would " easily beat 

 the best racers of the present day, a quarter of a mile in a four- 

 mile race," founding this assumption on a fact, or what he asserts 

 to be a fact, that the Beacon Course has never, since, been run in 

 shorter time, than it was by Hambletonian and Diamond, in 

 1799 ; or the Round Course in better, than by Alonzo and Or- 

 ville, in 1802. And these second best time races he sets re- 

 spectively at 45, and 32s., worse, than those of Childers as stated 

 above. 



But adding 45s. to Tm. 19s., the rate at which Childers is 

 said to have run four miles over the Beacon track, and we get 

 8m. 4s. for the time of Hambletonian and Diamond ; and add- 

 ing 32s. to Tm. 5s. — the rate at which the Round Course would 

 have been done, if protracted to four miles, according to the 

 time in which he is stated to have run over it, against Alman- 

 zor and Brown Betty, we get 7m. 37s., as the time of Alonzo 

 and Orville. 



These were, moreover, both single dashes, not heat races, 

 and, therefore, do not tell so decisively. 



It is unnecessary to say to American sportsmen, that the 

 time of the first race, 8m. 4s., for a first lieat, is simply no time 

 at all, nor has been so considered, in the United States, for the 

 last thirty years ; and that 7m. 37s., though it was thought 

 great, in 1823, when done by Henry, has now fallen altogether 

 into the shade, in 1856. 



In considering this point, I have of course drawn my com- 



