THE INVASION OF PERFIDIOUS ALBION 61 



method that any people, nation, or language (save 

 perhaps the ' children of the Desert,' and they with 

 but small probability of success) could be expected to 

 employ to any purpose : and having determined to 

 proceed by the said adoption, they had but one way of 

 discovering how they were getting on, and that was an 

 invasion of England, a descent uj^on English race- 

 courses open to all the world, and a contest between 

 the true English thoroughbred and the French edition 

 of it on that English thoroughbred's native heath. 

 We could not very well go over to them ; for, even if 

 the metal had been more attractive, the rules of the 

 French Jockey Club precluded us. No doubt, as we 

 have seen in the case of the French Derby in 1840, 

 there might occasionally be reason to believe that an 

 English thoroughbred had run, under false pretences, 

 against the best native ' Frenchmen,' and beaten them 

 ]iandsomely ; but such instances, even had they been 

 less rare and more openly confessed, could hardly be 

 considered quite satisfactory. Now, when the mountain 

 will not or cannot go to Mahomet, Mahomet has to go to 

 the mountain ; when the English ' cracks ' would not or 

 could not go over to France to ' try conclusions ' with 

 the French ' cracks,' the latter had to come over to us 

 in England. This invasion may be said to have com- 

 menced in earnest, as a regular series of campaigns, 

 about the year 1852. 



Up to that date desultory descents had been made 

 upon our racecourses by the French, who, moreover, 

 had not only imported but run English thoroughbreds 

 against their own native produce in small, chiefly pro- 

 vincial, affairs (in steeple-chases, no doubt, and in races 

 instituted by the Administration des Haras, though the 

 runners were mostly ' demi-sang ' and ' Arabs ') ; l)ut 



