or five hundred was a long price even for such horses, so ridden, as these; yet such we believe to have been the price not unfrequently offered to the Northamptonshire baronet; and stranger still, in those days, even refused. We have had Sir Charles Knightley's opinion on the stiffest part of the Pytchley country-the neighbourhood of Flecknoe: he does not know whether horses can get across it now, but he knows there were some that could and did, his own among the number. There is one trait in the character of Sir Charles Knightley as a sportsman, which appears to us pre-eminently to seek its place in this brief chapter of a fine old English gentleman's life; it is his connection with the late Lord Spencer, then Lord Althorp. The political career, the strong party feelings of Sir Charles are too much matter of notoriety to be ignored by any of our readers. He almost stands alone as the assertor of principles whose days are gone by. With those principles we have nothing to do; though we cannot but admire the sturdy oak that still remains firmly rooted to its place, when the blasts of popular clamour have uprooted all its fellows, or the strong hand of conviction transplanted them to a more genial soil. With Sir Charles's convictions sportsmen, for whom we write, have nothing to do: but what a bond of union was the love of hunting between two such politicians as Sir Charles Knightley and the late Lord Spencer! How the tastes of the country gentleman and the pursuits of agriculture must have triumphed over the petty feelings and electioneering squabbles of political life! And with all their patriotism and admiration for the great names with which they were associated nearly half a century ago on opposite benches, how they must have felt their hearts kindling towards each other, and burning with a generous rivalry, as masters of the finest hunting country in England. We think it speaks volumes for the qualities of the hearts of both of them; we leave politicians to decide as to the qualities of their heads.

Any notice in these pages should be essentially a sporting one, more particularly when the subject of it affords so fine a field as the worthy Northamptonshire baronet. But we shall travel a step out of our beaten track to call attention to the influence exercised by Sir Charles Knightley in his own county on the improvement of stock. His fine judgment in all things relating to country pursuits has, of late years, been employed in the breeding of cattle: his annual sale was a treat to the admirers of that most beautiful animal the short-horn. Nothing can at the present day exceed his desire to direct aright the judgment of his tenants and the farmers of the county in the selection of stock and the improvement of cattle, not only by the most useful practical advice, but by his own most excellent example; and no man need leave the dining-room of the Agricultural Society without as much knowledge of the subject from Sir Charles Knightley as it would take many a man years to attain. Throughout a long and most useful life his tastes have been such as befit the rank and position of one of the first-alas! that we should say one of the last-of the fine old country gentlemen of England.

Sir Charles Knightley was born in 1781; he is descended from one of the oldest and most highly connected families in England, numbering amongst his quarterings those of the daughter of the Protector Somerset, uncle to Edward VI. He succeeded his uncle in the baronetcy in 1812, and is married to a great grand-daughter of the first Earl of

Bristol. He represented Northamptonshire in parliament for many years, on the highest possible Tory principles; and upon his resignation a few years ago was replaced by his son, Rainald Knightley. The fine old family seat, Fawsley Park, is remarkable for its variety of wood and water, its exquisite beauty, and as the most certain find in the Pytchley country. It has been in the Knightley family since Henry VII.; though, we believe, some property in Staffordshire is still held by them under a grant from William the Conquerer. It would be wrong to close this notice of so fine a sportsman, without adding that if Mr. Knightley sits in his father's seat in St. Stephen's, in the field too he like his sire holds his own: no better man crosses that deep and strongly-fenced country. There are some good ones to beat: Mr. Villiers and Mr. Cust can cut out work for strong stomachs; but while Mr. Knightley follows in his father's steps, as a sportsman he can be second to none.

THE OMNIBUS.

"There he sat, and, as I thought, expounding the law and the prophets, until on drawing a little nearer, I found he was only expatiating on the merits of a brown horse."-BRACEBRIDGE HALL.

in rest.

After being the most notorious man in Europe for nearly seven months, William Palmer at lasts sleeps amid quick-lime in his prison grave, and the papers which have vied with each other in the wildest inventions and the strangest contradictions, have put their goose-quills One of them would have it that he heaved a deep sigh as he passed, on his heavily-fettered way from the station to the gaol, that pleasant garden at Dr. Knight's, where, in earlier days, he courted his "dearest Annie"; while another considers that he was decidedly jocular, and that, when one of the few who crowded to look at him stumbled and fell, he burst out into a boisterous laugh, and said: "Go it! That's the way to do it! Do it again!" The art of the penny-a-liner was never more exerted than in trying to describe the last scene of all, and sad baldness is the result. One of the two-pennies had it: "The executioner shook hands with him and departed; another moment the fatal bolt was drawn, and

PALMER WAS SUSPENDED!

a moment's struggle, and his soul passed away amid the sunshine of the heavens and the notes of singing birds!" The best account of the execution makes a great deal not of" singing birds," but of the pigeons, who wheeled aloft from the jail turrets as the grey 15-stone mass creaked in the breeze. cannot agree as to whether he naked into his narrow bed.

Even the crack morning papers had a coffin, or was hoisted down It is difficult to fancy that a corpse,

now half consumed, is all that remains of the florid owner of Goldfinder, whose name (after knowing him by sight for years) we asked for the first time as he passed out of the Doncaster enclosure on the last Friday with Cook. The friend who then informed us who he was, lately remarked to us that he never knew him till he came to the judge's chair at Chester, and asked whether Goldfinder or Talfourd had won the Chester Cup, and looked as if the victory of his own horse anything but suited his book. By an error of the press last month, we were made to say that Mr. Montague Chambers asked 1,000gs. instead of 500gs. for his defence; and we hear that Mr. Sergeant Shee (whose substitution for Sergeant Wilkins, who is said to be nearly well again, was anything but a happy one) received 300gs. for his services. A phrenological lecturer, who delivered a sort of discourse on, and took a cast of the wretched man's head, as he lay in the dead-house, considered that the rolling motion of his head and body, as he tripped along the corridor to his doom, was "the natural language of love of approbation"; and that "his tripping on his toes with a cat-like motion was the result of very large secretiveness." Who but he would have stepped out of his cell on to the gallery, and back again, even when he was pinioned, to have a look at his funeral procession as it formed! It reminds us of the poacher, of Dead Man's Corner, near Dunchurch, who saw his own funeral pass out of a heather shed one night, with his mother and brothers following it, and went home and died within two days. Palmer's winnings commenced in The Dutchman's year, and Doubt was one of his first race-horses. This mare was trained by Saunders, whereas The Victim and Young'un were under Eskritt's charge. His brothers were fond of this latter amusement, and the three once got up a steeple-chace, in which three of their horses ran, and Walter's won. It would have been well if he had stuck to this, as, whatever The Dutchman may have won for him, he lost on Hobbie Noble, and from that Derby Day his sorrows began.

Epsom seems to have left very few general impressions behind it, except that Fly-by-Night was not "intended that journey," and was not fit to run a yard, although everyone in the vicinity of the stable were on him, and are suffering in consequence from a raw quite as deep as the Songstress one. A great book-maker, it is said, stood £8,000 against him in one bet, and a clinker against Cannobie, and two well-known confederates never ceased peppering Fazzoletto to the last. Wentworth's defeat was a sad disappointment to his owners, who bid fair to be a good accession to the turf, if this throw out does not disgust them. All "the ground" excuses come with a bad grace from Danebury, whose twin constellations can try a horse as well as anyone out, and must have known, from the look of their nag, that there was not a symptom of staying about him. No wonder they kept him out of sight to the last moment on the day. The race was run to suit him, as it was a very slow Derby. For nine-tenths of the way the speed was very great; but it slackened so for two or three hundred yards, that, according to the jockeys, they "fairly stood still." The Day party won scarcely anything with Mincepie, as Aleppo beat her so easily the day before, that they dared not back her Oaks chance. Poor Sly's riding of Melissa was something awful; the very jockey.

boys roared over it with contempt; and, certainly, how Lord Clifden could let his other jockey (Job Marson) look on in plain clothes while nearly £4,000 of stakes were thus fooled away, is a perfectly incomprehensible mystery. Perhaps it was good-naturedly to make up to Sly for not having the St. Leger mount on the Clementina colt, when he came ready dressed to the course, and was taken behind the weighing-house by Isaac Day to receive a long explanation as to why "The Vicar" superseded him.

appa

Beverley had a copious uninteresting style of meeting; but the Yorkshire trysts lose half their interest, to our mind, from the low scale of the handicaps, which shuts out their senior jockeys so completely, and we sigh for the good old times when "Alfred Highflyer" used to tell us of the deeds of Slashing Harry and Henriade, and nine or ten of the Yorkshire seniors rode in every race but the Maiden Plate. Sulpitia showed some running at last; and, thanks to the handicap system, twenty-five horses (thirteen of them two-year-olds) showed for the Scurry, and owned a leader in Lady of the Lodge. Blink Bonny again ran to her form, and had, so it was said, an offer of £3,000 from Lord Londesboro' refused for her, on the ground that £5,000 (the sum at which Manganese was, according to rumour, offered to Baron Rothschild) was the thing for her. We doubt whether Mr. I'Anson will not have repented before this time next year, and we should be sorry to take her and £1,000 to boot if we could get Magnifier. The master of this fine colt, in his white hat, was one of the principal objects on the Great Western platform, as we took our places for Ascot on the Tuesday. This leviathan rent is a young Yorkshireman, the son of a farmer near Catterick, and was, we believe, first put into money through John Osborne's advice in The Dutchman year. Since then he has had horses on the quiet with three or four trainers, and has latterly been the great prop of Tom Dawson's stable. He is fast winning his title to be a second edition of the "All-knowing Jackson," whom Johnson has so immortalized. But we are on our Ascot way, and very dull it is in comparison with what it once was. The poor, crazy, railway-hating clergyman did not stand, with uplifted eyes and folded arms, under his wonted tree as we passed Hanwell; and we thought that the company must be crazy, when they posted up in their Windsor station that one-horse vehicles which had the entrée of their yard charged £3 3s. to Ascot and back, and a two-horse one £5 5s.! It is hardly reputable for them to sanction such a monstrous attempt at imposition. The Park, as we walked across it, seemed a perfect desert; all the world had gone by Staines, and fairly lined the cords when we reached the Heath, and found Spindle saddling. She hardly presented the look of a winner, as she stood there, leggy and light, and quivering like an aspen. Wells's 7st. 4lb. days are over, and so J. Goater had a winning mount, and performed well. Apathy is a blood-like, tall-short horse, with a nice Roman head, and a confused style of blaze on it, leggy and long from the hock to the ground -a style of make, in short, which was not served over this course. The Borderer's lad was one of the smallest we have seen for some time, and a strange contrast to his long-backed steed.

Alderoft's back, by-the-bye, has hardly recovered yet from its

Chester shake, and his hopes with Bird-in-Hand, whose mane was as dishevelled as one of Mr. Parr's cattle, were quite disappointed in the Triennial. The horse had a select Richmond party round him, as Gill saddled him among the heather, through which we waded to take stock of him. His head and neck are nice, but he is not a better style of horse than he was last year, and the hot hard ground quite stopped him. Wells, in all the glory of a new saddle, bestrode the lengthy and coughing Cannobie, who wants another year over his head, and more distance than he had here. The hurrying at the start overset him, and, though Wells thought he was winning as they crossed the road, the hill fairly stopped him. There is not enough about Aleppo; Peter Flat is a most tucked-up, herring-gutted animal, and Pit-a-pat is clever-a trifle short and leggy, perhaps and has lost that tendency to load on the shoulder which we thought we observed last year. Fly-by-Night had shed that wondrous black-satin bloom which made us suspicious of him at Epsom, and looked hard and well after his strong Leatherhead preparation. His good shoulder, and high and strong quarters, served him to a nicety up the hill, and he fairly cut it down like a scythe when "Ben" set him agoing. Such a poor lot as the Stakes animals one seldom sees; and even Mr. Stanley's veteran specimens of the Old England and Venison blood, with mere bagatelle hampers on their back, could do nothing. Flyby-Night then emerged once more from his promenade at the top of the hill, and was drawn up at the Swinley post with Yellow Jack-one of the most perfect-backed horses we know-and a great chesnut rasper called Grampian, with a most frightful head, own brother to Stilton, and standing over quite as much ground. Alfred Day stuck close to the black all the way round; and even when they got to the bottom, it struck us that Yellow Jack was not going like a winner, in spite of his strong lead, and the post-verdict did not surprise us. Making allowance for the disadvantage of making his own running, and putting a 5lb. beating and a 5lb. penalty into the scale, Yellow Jack has a slight pull over Fly-by-Night, and makes us still believe that the latter could not, under any circumstances, have beaten Ellington for the Derby. Fly-by-Night's off fore-leg went about three strides beyond the chair, and the red handkerchief which was tied round it for a slight support, sent home several with the impression that it had got frightfully cut. The four-year-olds were a poor lot, and the winner Shoreham, whom Nat rode with no little determination, was, as Tom Taylor said of him, "anything but a beauty," and not half the size of his kindred. Habena looked a poor bandaged creature; but Rogers must have thought it a good mount, or he would not have wasted to 7st. 13lb. for her, a thing he has not done for many a day. Pettit never expected that he would draw the weight, and was on the course dressed to ride. William Butler looked sadly black at her reverse; and if his countenance be any index, no man bears defeat worse, and seems more disposed to snap the jockey's head off. When Græculus Esuriens, who always seems as if his hinder parts did not belong to him, and cannot get over more than a T.Y.C., finished third, one may judge of the strength of the field, Claret ran a good horse; but he is one of the tall-short breed, who find no mercy here when they try to get home. Corabus has straight