126 HORSE-RACING IN ENGLAND 



sundry others. So that the editor of the EngHsh 

 ' Stud Book,' judging of the future from the past 

 and present, in 1821, had good reason to be 

 joyous over our exportations, as 'an object of 

 some importance in a commercial view '; and 

 events have justified his sanguine expectation 

 that the foreigners would not soon turn the 

 tables upon us, as they believed that they would, 

 so that we should have to go to them ' if not for 

 speed, at least for sound horses,' He acknow- 

 ledged, even at that distant date, that ' the hint 

 about soundness may be worth attention '; but, 

 in any case, the foreigners still come to us, and 

 (witness the great Ormonde) take our unsound 

 horses. 



As for ladies' patronage of horse-racing during 

 the reign of George IV., it is curious that their 

 open and active participation, apart from spec- 

 tatress-ship, should have waned to its present 

 condition almost under the auspices of ' the First 

 Gentleman,' but such seems to have been the 

 fact ; and as for the nomenclature of horses, 

 though it was not yet perhaps all that Mrs. 

 Grundy (if she had yet appeared upon the scene) 

 might have desired, it was approximating more 



