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their own ranks pilots and helmsmen skilful to con and to steer, all 

 will go on as it has gone with racing. 



Should, however, our sport at any time be left without the nobility 

 and gentry as a buttress, down it will crumhle just as surely as did 

 the Olympic games of old and, as I said before, the Prize Ring of 

 latter days, when these once great institutions lost the support of the 

 self-same class. 



Give heed, all Radicals, to this assertion ! 



My visits to Newmarket are always of the pleasantest nature. I 

 Talue more highly chats with some of the celebrated trainers there 

 than I should interviews with the heads of almost any other branch of 

 art and science. I always spend some time with the Prime Minister, 

 Mr. Mat Dawson, when, in his sitting-room or strolling about, I enjoy 

 the conversation of that great man. Yes, great he has proved himself 

 to be, and neither envy nor jealousy, nor yet emulation, can detract 

 from him one iota of the qualifications which have placed him at the 

 head of his profession. Good he also is, for never has he wilfully done 

 wrong during his public life. 



AVhat a collection of equine portraits he has at Melton House — 

 representing animals made celebrated through his own skill and 

 sagacity. In the hall hang the tails of Julius, Thormanby, and the 

 white Chanticleer. Around the dining-room are paintings by first 

 masters of Thormanby, Kingcraft, Wheel of Fortune, Jannette, Dutch 

 Oven, Silvio, Minting, St. Simon, Melton, Newminster, Julius, Alice 

 Hawthorne, Sterling, Ormonde, Catherine Hayes, Tristan, and Barcal- 

 dine. A bronze statuette of St. Simon is there also, and as it was 

 produced from a life-sized statue executed by Sir Edgar Boehm 

 for the Duke of Portland, the likeness is a perfect one. The figure 

 shows the horse's grand formation and perfect symmetry, and it is easy 

 to understand what his trainer states as a fact, that St. Simon was 

 the best horse he ever saw. 



Mr. Dawson told me that, except upon a few occasions, he never 

 backed horses heavily, and, moreover, added that if he had done so he 

 would probably be a poor man now. He has often not a penny on 

 many of the great races. A modest fiver or tenner— perhaps a pony, if 

 he had something very good — was the usual sum he put on his 

 horses, when he backed them at all. When a man like Mat Dawson, 

 ■with all his knowledge and opportunities for gaining " information," 

 sees the folly of backing horses and refrains therefrom, is it not lament- 

 able, ay, criminal, for those possessing neither to persist in doing so ? 



He is about to retire from public training, but is still hale and hearty, 

 and long may he remain so, to be a living example of what an " honest 

 man " is. 



Besides Newmarket and other training quarters, I visited classic 

 Whitewall, where still exist in pristine simplicity the single stalls in 

 which John Scott stabled his racehorses, and from which the great 



