THROWING A LIGHT ON THE SUBJECT. 107 



I may be asked, if I am not so strenuous as 

 many other persons in my praises of boxes for 

 horses, how I can reconcile with my ideas the fact 

 that the most valuable race-horses are kept in 

 them. I fairly answered such a question before, 

 by saying they were kept in them because, from 

 having always been so, it became in the end a 

 matter of necessity ; but it does not follow that 

 it is rio-ht. We lit our streets for centuries with 

 oil, and ridiculed the man who first proposed gas 

 as a substitute. However, we now find gas does 

 tolerably comfortably for us. 



Eace-horses were first kept, probably, for the 

 amusement and triumph of seeing them win their 

 races. They were continued with a view to 

 putting money in their owners' pockets by win- 

 ning races. They are now pretty frequently 

 kept for the purpose of losing races, by which 

 their owners still put money in their pockets, 

 though very few of them keep it there. Of what 

 « the select," alias " legs," may do, I say nothing : 

 double irons in Newgate to tliem. 



But we are not to bring race-horses forward 

 as specimens of sociability or good temper, either 

 to their own species or to us. There are few of 

 them we could trust to be walked side by side. 

 They will sometimes fly at each other at the 

 starting-post, and have been known to do so even 

 when running. Some will not run up to their 



