ECLIPSE AND FLYING CHILDEES. 387 



only 86 lbs."— 89 were carried. " The IsTew Orleans is fully 

 • six seconds quicker " — in four miles ? — " than the Union at the 

 time of Henry's race." Challenges have been offered the 

 backers of the 'New Orleans cracks, it is believed, on both 

 Henry's and Fashion's time, with the weights they carried, but 

 not accepted. 



But for the fear of being tedious, a comparison between 

 Lexington's time and that of the fastest races in England, at 

 four miles and upward, and of the relative weights carried, 

 would be here made. The subject will be dismissed, with the 

 expression of disbelief, for obvious reasons, in the incredible 

 accounts of Flying Childers. He, likewise, ran over the Beacon 

 Course, four miles, one furlong, and thirty-eight yards, in seven 

 minutes and thirty seconds ! " But no timer can see the length 

 of the Beacon Course, near a mile on one side being excluded 

 from view by " the Devil's ditch," an old Saxon work of in- 

 trenchment. The late Judge Dnval, of Maryland, and one of 

 the Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court, made a comparison 

 of the running of Childers and Eclipse, as follows ; " Eclipse 

 ran, at York, four miles in eight minutes, carrying 12 stone — 

 168 pounds, 42 pounds more than the standard weight at this 

 time. If the calculation of old experienced sportsmen, that 

 the addition of seven pounds weight in the rider makes the dif- 

 ference of a distance, which is 240 yards, in a heat of four miles, 

 be correct, then the running of Eclipse, carrying forty pounds 

 more than Childers, will ju-ove that Eclipse was the swiftest 

 animal." It does not appear that in any of his eighteen races 

 the time of Eclipse was at all noted, excepting at York, when 

 six years old, as above quoted. " In truth, not any horse had 

 the shadow of a chance of winning against Eclipse," — he dis- 

 tanced the field " whenever he chose," — " was never beaten, nor 

 had a whip flourished over him, or felt the tickling of a spur." 

 " Childers flourished in 1721-2, Eclipse in 1769-70." By the 

 way, in his inarks, in the portrait in the " American Turf Eegis- 

 ter," vol. ii., Childers resembles Lexington. " Next to these cele- 

 brated race-horses, perhaps Highflyer was the fleetest horse that 

 has been raised in England." But it does not appear that he, 

 and many other horses of the first fame that were never beaten, 

 Buch as Lath, Babraham, Mirza, Regulus, &c., ever ran a very 



