civilised aristocracy. The course itself is excellently kept; every new arrangement that can give beauty and effect to the whole has been adopted. No police seemed necessary to keep the people, who lined either side of the course, from the minutest transgression. As that admirable horseman, Mr. Mackensie Grieves (who had come from Paris to preside), cantered down the course on a well-bitted chestnut horse, it was evident that the sports would be marred by no unruly jockeys. Even the conventional dog did not put in an appearance. All was as it should be. Here and there rode a body of cavalry officers in uniform. On this side was a Prussian, on that an Austrian, wheeling a young impatient Arab through the manifold exercises of the manége. On the bank, facing the grand-stand, in silent expectation of the coming sport, sat a body of mounted cavalry. Within the enclosure the race-horses were being led about, and the jockeys themselves—English boys, with the well-known English names of Flatman, Pratt, Bottom and Kitchener—had the air of simple mortals, like you or me. The stands were filled moderately with well-dressed persons of both sexes; and on the lawn in front, and beneath the flowering shrubs, and luxuriant creepers of the balcony, in every variety of charming summer toilette, were seated crowds of pretty women. Between the races military bands played the exquisite music of Rossini and Mozart. The whole wore an air of enchantment. For the first time in my life I enjoyed a race without a single alloy. The Derby has its host of London pleasure-seekers, a motley crowd of confusion and intemperance. The St. Leger its Yorkshire Tyke, with his broad dialect and narrow prejudices. Baden has neither the one nor the other. It is a small Goodwood, without the necessary disadvantages of every English course. In one thing alone we beat them—in the surpassing loveliness of our English women. We cannot have their climate. The innocence of racing in its integrity is gone from us for ever; but the beauty, the charm, the unconscious loveliness of an English girl, I have never seen equalled; and any approach to its parallel is a problem hitherto unsolved. If I say that the arrangements for leaving the course were as orderly and convenient as any other part of the day’s programme, I have said sufficient to convince my reader that I was neither run over by a van nor into by a drunken post-boy. My horses were neither collared by a policeman nor thrown on their haunches by an oblivious turnpike-man. I was neither chaffed by a Hansom-cabman nor pelted with eggs or cocoa-nuts. The races were to be finished by 5 p.m., and by that hour I was once more on my road to Baden, where I arrived without let or hindrance, to assist at those enjoyments which invariably follow a day of such very innocent amusement. I have inflicted upon my reader neither the names, weights, nor colours of the riders; but I hope I have given him some idea of the primitive form in which racing was done by our ancestors, and made him feel some regret that it can be no longer done by ourselves.
It must be observed that, during these Saturnalia, which extend over about a fortnight, and in which time the four days’ racing is included with an interval of two or three days between each, the foreign element is predominant in Baden. The inhabitants of that favoured locality have vacated their seats. The hotels which constitute the whole of the lower part of the town along the banks of the little streamlet which is dignified with the name of the Oos, are crowded to suffocation. That curious mixture of impertinence and good-nature, the German waiter, is taxed to his utmost; and the whole world, with nothing to do, is always behind hand, and always in a hurry. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Russians and Americans have taken the place by storm. There is a Babel of tongues; and he who talks most, so that it be in a dialect only comprehensible, will probably get what he wants soonest. Weather permitting, the life cannot be too al fresco to be enjoyable. A wet day at Baden I have never seen. Contemplations of something terrible and undefined hung over me one morning; but the clouds broke, and, before committing suicide, I went out shooting myself. I was really too tired, on my return, to put my intention into execution. The following morning the sun shone brightly again, and I recommenced a day of the most active idleness.
The ordinary pleasures of Baden life I pass without further comment. It is a very old story. The racing is now three years old; a new feature in the programme of Black Forest attractions. It is so well done—so honestly and purely intended for a jour de fête, to the exclusion of the objectionable parts of our own turf, that I hope, year by year, to see it increasing in the value of its stakes, and by consequence in the character of its horses. At present the French turf is near enough to exhibit the efficiency of its stable, without any strong rivalry; but there is nothing of this kind that an Englishman will not attempt, if it be worth his while, and nothing of the kind in which he is not eminently successful.
THE POET’S HOME.
Mark yonder cot, among the trees,
Where flow’rs in native freedom twine,
Whose fragrance courts the healthy breeze
That sheds around their scent divine.
Within that humble cot thou’lt find
More pow’r than dwells ’neath gilded dome;
The wealth of wit, the pow’r of mind,
For there behold a poet’s home.
While counted gold, ’neath bolt and bar,
To hide from all the miser tries,
The poet’s wealth—more precious far—
In open page, uncounted lies.
The pearls of thought, the mental ore,
By fancy’s fire to gold refined,
The poet makes no hidden store,
But shares his wealth with all mankind.
Then wealth, and pomp, and pow’r give way,
And warriors bold with flag unfurl’d;
A king can but one nation sway—
The poet’s rule is o’er the world!
Then honour be, without a blot,
Around his path where’er he roam,
But where he loves and wanders not
Be blessings!—on the poet’s home.
