The Foreign Ma7'ket, 147 



horses they do not interfere. Those that are to be 

 advertised are the sole subjects of their surveillance, 

 and they will not allow a roarer under any considera- 

 tion to be published in circulars or newspapers. 

 Heretic by Muley Moloch was not passed ; and Mr. 

 Ashton had him on his hands for years, simply as a 

 teazer. 



Competition in blood sires proved the Mr. Kirby in 

 best ; and hence, when in later yeais the Difficulties. 

 Government brought over such an infinity of their 

 own, the private owners had to lower their price, and 

 their standard along with it. In the early part of the 

 centur}% Messrs. Banks and Tomlin had fifteen high- 

 class sires in Moscow ; and while Mr. Jackson had 

 Soothsayer, Leopold, Magistrate, Sovereign, and 

 Antar, Mt. Kirby confronted him with Juggler by 

 Comus, Archibald, and Bourbon. The latter was 

 then sold to a nobleman, and when the Alderman and 

 Fleur-de-Lis, the only pledges that he left behind him, 

 ran so well, the keen old tyke hurried across with a 

 2500 guinea offer for him. Alas ! the Count was not 

 to be spoken to, except through his steward ; he, good 

 man, would not move in the matter until his dear wife 

 had received two costly shawls ; and after all, the 

 Emperor or his aide-de-camp got hold of the Racing 

 Calendar, and would not let him go. We have often 

 sat with the old man, while he told us, race-meeting 

 after race-meeting at York, how he was done out of 

 those shawls. In our last visit, even when his rosary 

 occupied all his thoughts, he looked up at intervals, 

 and dipping back into the past, told that tale once 

 more ; and how he and his favourite jockey, Mark 

 Noble, put a gouty horse into blue clay boots at 

 Ormskirk all night, and won a plate with him next 

 day. 



Mr. Walkden came after Mr. Kirby, and an offer 

 of three thousand guineas arrived out from the re- 

 pentant Mr. Forth for his horse Interpreter, as soon as 



L 2 



