Scythian to have been at his age. Give me him and the Eulogy filly for my money; and then his companion and Lady Strut's infant. Time pressed, so I did not get through all the mares, and in fact I care very little for this class of animal. Hersey I had forgot; but I could recall Stamp and when Jamaica honoured me with a most lengthy unladylike stare, it was impossible to mistake who she was, from her likeness about the head to her son Cariboo. I went down to Eltham to look at him last Christmas, for a friend, but £400 quite choked me off from bidding; and he may well be unsold yet, if that is their estimate. Martha Lynn was in her house, where, as the dam of Voltigeur, I respectfully waited on her. She is a nice mare; but I see no especial trace of him in any part of her. Her daughter, Vivandière, is here with her, and Volley as well, so that royalty is pretty well monopolizing this Mulatto blood. I was all curiosity to see Orlando, late "Sandwich," as beyond a glimpse of him at the 1844 Derby start, when I was eagerly watching Ratan and Ugly Buck, I had never seen him before. Oddly enough, I just missed seeing him win the July by about five minutes, and arrived just to see his white legs in the distance as he was led home in his sheets to the town. Crucifix would have done well to stick to him, instead of roaming off to Iago, Cotherstone, and Bay Middleton. He is undoubtedly at the head of English blood stock; and his stock, taking them throughout, fetch higher prices as yearlings than any others. One of them, King of the Forest I think, is, barring his smallish feet, the nicest yearling I saw in 1855.

Barbelle's foal to him-the slashing Zuyder Zec-is now, I believe, Mr. Stirling Craufurd's, and not Mr. "Norton's;" but the fancy of the Middleham people runs rather more with Marion than either the above colt or the Lord of the Hills.

I

There is hardly anything at Tattersall's now; but I could not resist popping in, a few Mondays ago, to see old Launcelot, who had come from Holywell, to try his fortune at the hammer. He was the only "penn'orth of bread" to an "intolerable quantity of sack" that day, although there were two or three nice stamped hunters, and three very nice ponies-two of them little bull-necked greys, and a match. My only heraldry studies in the course of a year come off while a nondescript is at the hammer, and I stray away into that gloomy vista of carriages under the shed, and diligently con their coats of arms. cannot help thinking, as I get among the musty old family coaches which are poked away at the far end, with their dingy, drooping hammercloths, and their cold, churchyard feel, as you look inside, what generations of beauties-who are now, perchance, faded spinsters, with false locks-have gone to the county balls in them, with nothing but a simple wreath in their hair, and what stories of girlish love and confidence, family quarrels, mournings, unjust settlements, money matches, cover squabbles, and election jealousies those old faded linings have been cognizant of, in their day!

But I am forgetting Launcelot; and, as he was not a "gift-horse" (though really a gift at the price), I had a look in his mouth, and shut it again with the impression that he has about the longest incisors I ever saw. There was a tale that, at the outset of his stud career, he would not look at a mare; but he has long since cured of that squeamishness, and is the sire of more than twenty winners. Mr. Stephenson

used him a good deal just at the end of his breeding career. He is wonderfully like Touchstone-lengthy, though not so massive quartered -and has that expressive square-pointed, high-bred nostril, which so especially marks the ancestral "black-brown of Eaton," and looked remarkably fresh as he stood up beneath the archway, with an old Turf Calendar of a man holding forth fondly on his prowess with "Bill Scott." However, when he was led out, not a soul would bid for him. Mr. Harry Hill stood by, smiling, but callous, and merely suggested in a loud voice to Mr. Tattersall and the public that he was "first for the Leger, and second for the Derby." He was put in at 250 guineas, but not a sound was heard; and actually he was run down the gamut to 60 guineas; but even then there was not one bidding; and he was led back to the place from whence he came strange hard lines for the own brother to the premier stallion of England! What could the foreigners be about? They must be strangely inconsistent in their purchases. It was only last Doncaster meeting that I met one all on fire to get hold of a sire who has hardly a sound joint in him, because "De blood is so good-so var good;" and here a coalition of Camel and Banter goes a-begging. So runs the world away. Mr. A. Johnstone, however, owed too much to the blood to let him pass, and his solitary 100gs. bid on the next Monday secured him as a companion to his nephew, Annandale.

This over, and being out for the afternoon, I adjourned to 121, Piccadilly, to see the great collection of Landseer's engraved works, 275 in all, extending over about forty years. There are, I believe, all here, down to two hunters of Mr. Wigram's, whose engraving is cut out of the "Illustrated News," and framed among its compeers. The first that caught my eye was the study of the little Royal wirehaired terrier, which begs in the Royal picture of "The Paroquet on its Perch." The writing below tells us that it "was etched by Edwin Landseer, July 2nd, 1842, at Buckingham Palace, in half an hour, and bit in by Thomas Landseer in ten minutes." Then come two ponies, one of which is leaping a log, with the then young Lord Cosmo Russell on his back. This was the first picture I ever possessed, and I love it better than all accordingly; and there is a freshness and ease about both boy and pony which he has never beaten in his maturer mahl-stick days. A tiger's head and a fox's brush, on one sheet, are also very dashing; but the two hunters are hardly worthy of him, and I may say the same of the horse of The Duke (who looks three stone too heavy at least), in "The Visit to Waterloo." The quarter is short, the hoofs far too large for the pasterns, and there is a general twist in the horse's attitude, and a want of power about the legs, which one is surprised to see. In a grouped and foreshortened horse no one can be greater, and in a picturesque pony he is unbeatable; but as a drawer of a horse broad-side, I look on Herring senior as far before him. "Cora, a Labrador Bitch, 1823," is a very remarkable specimen of great genius without experience. She lies guarding a portmanteau and bag and umbrella, while the preparations for the starting of the coach go on in the distance. The perspective gives one a notion as if the artist had placed himself for his line of sight on the top of a house, and looked down below, as the horses are far above the level of the bitch, and at the very top of the

picture. A horse scratching, in it, is a clever study, but the artist must be amused at the twist and length of one of the others. The two political caricatures are not here in their best form, as they are not coloured. The racer, and the two Westminster characters who accompany it, are a marvel of finish, when it is seen in colours; and the animal always struck us as being very like Lord Derby's own horse Ortolano, but the fetlocks arc odd, and the saddle and sheeting arrangements are not strictly Newmarket. "Dead for a ducat" is delightful; and then comes a great favourite of ours, the two boys and two donkeys, which is dated 1834. Two Scotch greyhounds' heads are dated 19 years subsequent to them, and are very fine, and then we seem to dive right into his earlier days. There are three Southdown rams, sketched when he was only eleven, which would fairly set any sheep drawing we have ever seen, at defiance; and two pigs, the property of Mr. Bacon, of Essex, which were dashed off not many years after. One of them represents the level plump English boar, and the other is a gaunt French one, which looks as if it had been sweated by a pack of dogs through the village every morning, till it had run to nothing but leg and bone. There is also a huge St. Bernard dog, which he went down to " Leasowe Castle, near Liverpool," to sketch, when he was about eighteen. It was then six feet four in length and two feet seven in height, and still growing. Near them was a splendid Indian-ink sketch of Paganini, in one of his frenzied moments, when he was "making his strings for to shpeak," with his long hair streaming behind him, and his still longer nose almost touching the violin. He is only one of a series of portraits, in which we of course find "Blessington's eyes," and a host of other beauties, which Thorburn would not disdain to call his own. In 1823 we find him very strong in lions. Nero is there in all his glory, and that sweet little etching of the lioness and the dog. Those were days when "Dogs wha hae by Wallace bled," &c., out of the Sporting Magazine, was a great song, and people talked of little else than what was to fight Wombwell's crack. The "popular sketch" publisher who selected an engraver for "The tired Reaper," did our artist a sad injustice. Then there are some rare deer fighting, and a delightful little "Retriever and Rabbit," which, to our great delight, bears the inscription of "Sporting Magazine, 1832." Two foxes quarrelling about a rabbit is a nice match to two dogs snarling defiance over a bone, which we copied over and over again when we were a boy, along with those two dogs pointing a hare in turnips. We seem to see ourselves now getting the Indian ink ready on the plate, while a tall master is cutting our crow-quill to a fine nib. None of these are, however, engraved better than the "Fox Dog," another very old friend from the above limner's portfolio. The five members, Cottager and Co., of the Hatfield Hunt, are not so clever, and we have copied them too. Two dogs at a rabbit-hole, and a fox stealing up to some partridges, must not be forgotten, nor "Brutus, sire of Mr. Landseer's Brutus"; and the old dog, who evidently first furnished the hint for "Low Life." The Maternities are nice, but we prefer two sketches in six compartments, representing Wounded Game and Live Game. In the one we see the birds in all their happy majesty, and in the other they lie stretched out bleeding. We really could not wish a feather altered. A dog watching some game is exquisite, and

so are two voluptuary dogs, waddling side by side after their mistresses, and holding each other in the most sovereign contempt. "Jessie Landseer" has also, we observed, engraved a pony for her relative, the first time we ever remember seeing a lady's name so attached to a picture. A Monkey in a Corner must not be forgotten because he is there, nor "The Monkey which has seen the World," nor that strange one-eyed dog sketch of "All that remains of the Glory of John Smith." The letterpress beneath the latter is well worth reading. It tells how the dog lost an eye at Waterloo, and entered into partnership then and there with a soldier who had lost his leg; how they toddled home to England together, and lived on eightpence a day; and here the old dog is shown as he died, leaning his head against the mattress on which he had last seen his adopted warrior-master in his coffin. The painter and engraver hint, that as the two had no special gazette of their own, they step forward to supply the place. Might it be our happy fate to have such an historic pencil to tell of us when we are gone, and we should care for no marble gazette.

We wish Landseer would give us a great meet. Herring's horses are faultless, and so are Grant's men; but no one but Landseer can draw and group horses, dogs, and men as they should be. Among his general pictures we hardly cast an eye. We have flattened our noses against shop-windows out of homage to them for years, and we can do no more. The Otter Hunt, of which Sir James Graham's eldest son has, we think, the pen-and-ink design, as it ran off from the author's brain, has too much painful writhing motion in it; and on the whole, we do not know that we like anything better than the Girl with the Fawns following her, on the banks of a lake.

Critics aver with delight that " the lines in the Silenus at Blenheim are drunk;" and we may truly say, that in this picture the very fawns walk and fondle their guardian. Can we wonder that when high-art artists feel what mere babies they are in animals and landscapes, and how they have had to bow before him in "the human form divine," whenever they see the group in Bolton Abbey, that they send forth such impotent howls, that Landseer should have distanced them all in the opinion of the French?

And so we turn again to our old calf-bound friend, Weatherby, to see what he says this Christmas. Not many sires of note are to give us a taste of their quality next year, exeept Cossack, Confessor, Midas, Vatican, and Voltigeur, and out of 1,016 foals entered already this season, the following number are credited to certain crack horses.

Out of the 80, which have produced winners in England and Scotland, "Bell's Life's" capital tables give the following as the first six. Ion's success (5th) is purely a Wild Dayrell one; but The Flying Dutchman, with only two-year-olds, has worked up sixth in his first season. Poor Lanercost used to head this list once; but now he is only 72nd, with three leather-plating winners.

The five other top-sawyers run thus

The results of great crosses in 1855 are also to this effect—

The Austrian government have, I see, got a filly by Sir Hercules, out of Sampler, and a colt by Cossack, out of Cambric, and 67 of the foals were dead before December 1st. Among the possessors of the largest number of foals are Sir Tatton Sykes 46, The Rawcliffe Company 38, Mr. Stebbing 26, Mr. A. Johnstone 19, Lord Exeter 16, and Mr. Greville 15; and of all names to give a colt, "F.-M. The Duke of Duty," is the oddest. Sir Tatton is always changing his sires. He had Womersley only a season; then came Fernhill; and now Daniel O'Rourke is succeeded by Andover. Sleight of Hand had a longer reign than most have at Sledmere. Lowering prices seems the order of the day among stallions; Bay Middleton still keeps at 50 guineas: but Birdcatcher and Melbourne have sunk from it, one to half price, and the other to 20 guineas. Kingstown, a rare scion of the blood of Voltaire and Birdcatcher, is only at