PEBFACB. 



Circumstances rather than natural aptitude, taste, in- 

 cHnation, or deliberate design have made me for more 

 than twenty years a close student of liorse-racing, both 

 English and French. Into those circumstances there 

 is no occasion to enter, and I have not the slightest 

 intention of being gratuitously tedious. Suffice it to 

 say that my first experience of horse-racing carries me 

 back more than forty years to a day of which I have 

 still a vivid remembrance, when I saw an animal belong- 

 ing to the famous Colonel (afterwards General) Peel 

 run at a provincial race meeting ; and that I believe 

 I can still from mere memory give that animal's name 

 (although it achieved no great celebrity) — ' I-am-not- 

 aware.' Since then I have witnessed a great many 

 of tlie most memorable races ever run, and have had 

 at least a bowing acquaintance witli some of the most 

 notable race horses, English, French, Austro-Hungarian, 

 German, American, and others, that ever came to the 

 post. I saw the hopes of the ' Kupert ' Earl of Derby 

 and his Toxophilite upset at Epsom by ' the lucky 



