2 IIORSE-RACING IN FKANCE 



Hugh Capet, to our king Athelstan, grandson of Alfred 

 the Great. However that may be, it is quite certain 

 that horse-racing as a regular institution, as a systematic 

 pursuit, as both the sport of kings and at the same time 

 a national pastime, as a means of contributing to the 

 improvement of native horseflesh or to the replacement 

 of it by a better breed, imported, acclimatised, natu- 

 ralised, and propagated (when emulation — as it was 

 sure to do — caused owners to seek for horses wherever 

 the best were to be found), is of purely English initia- 

 tion : it was known indeed in France, but known only 

 to be lightly regarded and generally repudiated (with 

 a few exceptions) until the formation of the Societe 

 d 'Encouragement pour 1' Amelioration des Eaces de 

 Chevaux en France, commonly called the French Jockey 

 Club, in 1833. 



This is the more remarkable because to the French 

 we were indebted for some of the very best sires that 

 are named in the pedigrees of our thoroughbreds : 

 for instance, St. Victor's Barb (the property of 

 ' Monsieur St. Victor of France '), the famous Curwen 

 bay Barb, the almost equally celebrated Thoulouse 

 Barb, and the Godolphin Arabian (or Barb), whose 

 history has been written by the great 'romancer' 

 M. Eugene Sue, are known to have resided in France 

 and to have belonged originally to Frenchmen. And 

 since horse-racing on the English system has become 

 an established institution in France great moan lias 

 been made by French sporting writers over the negli- 

 gence of their predeceased compatriots, who permitted 

 those ' sons of the desert,' presented to the Grande Nation 

 by awe-stricken Eastern potentates, to slip into the 

 clutches of perfidious Albion, thus laying the founda- 

 tion of that supremacy on the turf which (as 'well 



