ON STEEPLE-CHASING. 295 



prise on first seeing the Grand National 

 course at Aintree ; and I must own also to 

 a little disappointment as well — not certainly 

 with the size of the fences, which were hig 

 enough in all conscience, great, spreading, 

 stifiiy built erections, with a low guard-rail 

 on the take-off side, and wide on the top, 

 many of them, as a dining-room table is 

 long. But somehow or another I had pic- 

 tured to myself for years a very fine natural 

 course, with Becher's and "Valentine's brooks 

 like the Langton brook or the Whissendine, 

 to which the grand thoroughbreds engaged 

 would come racing down and cover some 

 sixteen to twenty feet of water in their 

 stride. As a matter of fact, it being a very 

 dry spring, there was not a drop of water 

 in either ; and both, moreover, were nothing 

 but small ditches, and so overhung by the 

 outward slant of the fence that any horse 

 which cleared the latter must clear the 

 ditch too. Notwithstanding the thoroughly 



