THE HORSE-GOD.

They hear of their horse-god, they read of him in their sacred scriptures, and for a few brief moments they can see him sweeping meteor-like over the grass. But it is only a few who are favoured with this beatific vision. To the immense

majority the object of their devotion is worshipped unseen. But, seen or unseen, he is surrounded with all the mystery of an ancient oracle. He has his hierophants, his priests of the cave, and all the satellites which gather round the worship of the mysterious Invisible. However mysterious it may be, it is nevertheless real, and it has an organisation not as venerable, but almost as complex, as that of the more historic churches. It has racing stables in place of theological colleges, and its places of worship may be found in every part of the land, from what may be regarded as the metropolitan cathedral of Newmarket down to the humblest little wayside meeting which affords its devotees an opportunity of worship. A recent writer-Major Seton Churchill-declares that there are more professional bookmakers who dedicate the whole of their lives to their profession, than there are incumbents in the Church of England, and if their assistants are included, the priesthood of the turf considerably outnumbers the ministers of all denominations. Nor does the worship of the horsegod lack sincerity, which is evinced by a readiness to sacrifice on his altar.

HIS HIEROPHANTS.

Some of the jockeys, who may be regarded as the hierophants of this pagan creed, receive higher salaries than the Archbishop of Canterbury. In other respects turfites put Christians to shame. There are few indeed

the services which are continually taking place in the open air. Judged by the newspapers, the Christian Church is simply not in it compared with the worship of the horse-god. The Church in all ages has had its prophets, but for the most part they have been excep

tional personages, appearing at irregular intervals, according as the Divine afflatus was vouchsafed to man. In the Church of the Turf the supply of prophets is inexhaustible. Its array of seers is more imposing, so far as numbers are concerned, than that which is to be found in any other church of any other age.

THE GOOD THAT IS IN IT.

In many respects the cult of the horse-god can claim credit for conferring many indirect advantages upon its worshippers. Ethics are not its strong point, that is true; but man does not live by morality alone, and he would be a blind fanatic who would deny that the Church of the Turf confers many benefits upon its votaries. To begin with, it provides them with a distraction and makes their existence less dull, and dulness is the mother of many sins, and most of the vices; it compels thousands and hundreds of thousands of its devotees to spend hours on breezy uplands and in sunny parks to the great benefit of their health, nor would the most pious Christian deny that from the hygienic point of view these assemblages of the turf do more for the physical health of those who are brought together in the open air than can be claimed for the hot and stifling atmosphere which hangs like a pall over the bowed heads of Christian worshippers in many a chapel and church. Nor should the intellectual training which it gives to its followers be forgotten. The Church of the Turf has its history, less sublime, of course, than that which is recorded in the Acta Sanctorum; but, nevertheless, it is a history, and as such is a perpetual incentive to study, and a continual exercise ground for the human memory. The philosopher and the patriot would no doubt prefer that the British shopkeeper and artisan should charge their memories with facts more important to the general well-being than the pedigree of the favourite or the names of the winners of the Derby. But we have to take what we can get. He would be a bold man who would venture to condemn on utilitarian grounds the mnemonic exercises of the devotee of the turf. The same objection might be taken to the making of Latin verse in our public schools and universities. But history is not the only study which the cult of the horse-god stimulates.

of the orthodox, whether of the clergy or the laity, who search the scriptures with the regularity and punctuality which distinguish the followers of the rival creed. For the Church of the Turf has its scriptures, which are known and read by all its members. There are said to be no fewer than fifty papers devoted to this cult in London alone, and nearly every paper in the country is compelled to dedicate a section of its space to chronicie

ITS EDUCATIONAL VALUE.

It may be claimed with reason to be a kind of illegitimate branch of university extension so far at least as arithmetic is concerned. The elaborate arithmetical calculations which are involved in making a book are most inconceivable to those who have never made a bet. Every bookmaker is in his small way a mathematician familiar with the properties of figures and the subtle mysteries of proportion. The fact that these abstruse calculations based on betting lists have no real bearing on the problems of real life is to bring against them a charge which is no greater than that which the utilitarians are constantly urging against the study of dead languages and of the higher mathematics. Another benefit which results indirectly from the worship of the horse-god is the improvement of horseflesh, and it would be ungenerous on the part of the followers of the purer creed to ignore the fact that it has been one of the influences which have tended to develop the sense of human brotherhood, to level class distinctions, and to compel men of all conditions of life to meet and mingle on a common footing in pursuit of a common end.

A NOTE OF THE ENGLISH RACE.

So much at least may be admitted by even those who regard the worship of the horse-god with the same antipathy which the early Christians regarded the worship of Jupiter or the rites of Cybele. For good or for evil this strange cult has rooted itself into the English race. The racehorse is much more of a national symbol than the British lion. Wherever the Englishman goes he takes his equine deity with him as punctiliously as other Englishmen take their bibles and prayer-books. In the vast New World which we are peopling with men who speak the "tongue which Shakespeare spake" there are always some to be found who will use that tongue to shout the odds and to back the favourite. It is so in America, in Australia, in India; and even in Mashonaland a race meeting was one of the earliest signs of the dominion of Britain after the disappearance of the assegais of the Matabele. Nor is it only in England and Englishspeaking lands that the religion of the turf has found eager followers. As a thousand years ago missionaries proceeded from this land to Christianise the pagan inhabitants of Central Europe, so in these latter days missionaries of another sort have established more easily and with not less success the distinctive paraphernalia of the new worship. Racecourses have sprung up in Germany and in France in the footsteps of these modern missionaries. Canterbury is less of a world centre in many respects than Newmarket, and there are few parts of the world in which the result of the Derby does not cause a much more intense thrill of human interest than the nomination of an archbishop or the issue of a prosecution for heresy.

SAINTS OF THE TURF.

It is therefore not strange that the religion of the turf, like other religions, should produce its saints in the shape of equine prodigies which realise the ideal of their worshippers, combining the points of character and the capacities which, in the opinion of their worshippers, constitute the supreme excellence, and which therefore may be regarded as corresponding to those beatified mortals who imbibe so much of the spirit of their religion in their life as to be canonised after death. As befits a religion which is based upon speed, the worshippers of the horsegod do not delay as long as the sacred congregation at Home in discovering the merits of their saints. Recognition of supreme merit is instantaneous, and the

equine prodigy finds his place in the calendar long before the Christian saint would have got through the initial struggles with the prejudices and the stupidity of the hierarchy which will ultimately declare his sanctity. This year is notable for the appearance of one of these saints of the turf. Ladas, the winner of the Two Thousand, the Newmarket Stakes, and the Derby, is by universal consent acknowledged to be the best horse we are likely to see before the twentieth century. Ladas, therefore, in the popular calendar may be regarded as St. Ladas, and as such he is much the most conspicuous personage which has figured upon the stage of the world during the last month. I have written character sketches of Popes, and Emperors, and newspapers; last month I tried my hand at a character sketch of an obscure industrial and socialistic movement. It will therefore be a novelty to add to our gallery a sketch of the great St. Ladas. This I do the more readily as it affords me an opening of saying some things which very much need to be said just now on the subject of the turf.

II. ST. LADAS.

It is only a bad man who does not love a good horse. Nothing is more silly than the attempt made by some writers to pretend that Nonconformists, because they object to degrading horses to the level of dice, do not understand the natural liking of a man for his steed. The love and sympathy which most Englishmen and Englishwomen feel for horses are far too deeply seated in the vitals of our race to be rooted out by the accident of attendance at chapel instead of at church. It would take more than three centuries of Nonconformity to extirpate from the heart of man or women of English birth the sentiment of genuine liking for the horse. It would be strange if it were not so. For in the long and weary centuries during which man has been laboriously evolved, the horse was his indispensable friend and ally. The horse was to his half-civilised rider what gunpowder is now to the civilised races of the world. It secured them the ascendancy, the mastery and the direction of the nonriding races. There would be something of ingratitude if we forgot how the horse helped to save civilisation, even if he did not continually renew his services to his biped friends.

THE LOVE OF HORSES.

But we need not go to the recondite mysteries of the inherited sense of race obligation to explain the universal love for horses which characterises all our people, without distinction or sectarian difference. No other animal is so closely associated with all that is most heroic and romantic in the history of mankind. When the destiny of nations has trembled in the balance, and when the safety of dynasties has depended upon the issue of a single battle or the death of a single leader, the horse has so frequently been the instrument by which Fate revealed her decree, that we feel instinctively, and rightly, a sense of co-partnership, a cameraderie with the horse that we do not feel with regard to any other animal. The horse seems to play a semi-independent role of his own in the great drama of human history. Bucephalus is perhaps better known than Alexander the Great, and Black Auster, although a myth of the poet's brain, is more vividly real in early Roman history to our schoolboys than all the shadowy humans who fought by his side on the eventful day by Lake Regillus.

Now, bear me well, Black Auster,
Into yon thick array;
And thou and I will have revenge
For thy good lord this day.

In these words of the Dictator Aulus we have the expression of the exact note of community that exists between horse and man.

THEIR HUMANITY.

It is a kind of communion of humanity, the nearest approach on the side of the quadrupeds to the communion of saints on the side of the angels. William the Conqueror, who crushed the English at Hastings, was slain by his horse in Normandy. Paul Revere's ride and Sheridan's famous ride are alike remembered, quite as much for the sake of the horses as for their riders. Other animals stand outside, or are but used as tools by man in his battles and his enterprises. The horse takes a part in the game himself, and is therefore nearer to us than any other quadruped. The majesty and the glory of the horse which inspired the author of Job with one of the noblest of all descriptions of the horse in literature, are as obvious now as they were when the ancient bard sang about him whose neck is "clothed with thunder. He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted. He saith among the trumpets, Ha! ha and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains,

and the shouting." Why then should it be imagined that a difference of

invited to Mentmore it was a subject of kindly jest that of all the visitors there was no one who took so keen an interest in Lord Rosebery's racehorses as Mr. McDougall the Methodist. There was nothing wonderful in that. The last person to take a really human personal interest in a horse, as a horse, is the man to whom the horse has become a mere four-legged substitute for the roulette table. The gambling element submerges the human-equine character of the horse. Personally, I have always had an intense realising sense of companionship with horses. I am afraid that I was in my teens before I could even conceive the possibility that a man or woman either could be as interesting as a horse. Whenever there was a carriage accident I never cared about the fate of the humans until I heard how the horses had escaped. In afterlife my horsesand I have only owned twowere so much a part of my family that I could no more have sold them than I could have sold my own children. Yet for all that I have never seen a horserace in my life, and I did what little I could to help Mr. Hawke to found the Anti-Gambling League which is now meeting with such constantly increasing support as to justify the hope that at last something practical will be done towards stemming one of the greatest plagues of the day. My experience was not at

opinion as to the Thirty-nine Articles or the historic episcopate would blind one half of Her Majesty's subjects to the graces and the glories of the horse?"

The Thirty-nine Articles and apostolical succession may be very important, but they do not bite so deep as that. Our Anglican fellow-subjects do not often realise how ridiculous they make themselves by these airs of the nursery. Unfortunately this is by no means the only instance of the insolence which the Establishment seems to engender among many of its supporters. Folly lasts long when its arrogance is bolstered up by ecclesiastical conceit or theological intolerance.

NONCONFORMISTS AND HORSES.

When the members of the London County Council were

all uncommon. I suppose there is many a child in Nonconformist homes to-day who would shrink from the racecourse as from the brink of hell, who nevertheless loves horses so much that of all the books in the Bible he loves best the book of the Revelation, because of that wonderful sixth chapter in which the seals were opened, and behold a white horse; and then there went forth another horse, which was red, followed after the third seal by a black horse, after which "I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed after him." Always with the horse there was the idea of power. Even when the name of him that sat on horseback was Death, they all went forth conquering and to conquer. Swiftness and courage and might and victory-all these are present in the horse.

And that which the child imbibes with his daily Bible lesson is deepened and rendered still more radiantly attractive when he begins to read, as every child should, as soon as he can read at all, the hero stories and romances of the early days. Of all the Early English romances none is more fascinating than that of Sir Bevis of Hampton-and why? Because at every turn and twist of the chequered fortunes of that doughty champion, his good steed Arundel is to the fore. The romance is really the story of how that peerless steed snaps seven chains to rejoin its master, defies all his adversaries, and in short proves so doughty an ally that it deserved knighthood if ever horse did. Arundel reminds one of Ladas-and so I get back to my text-for says the quaint old rhyme :

"Josyan gave him, sith then a steed,

The best that ever on ground gede;
Full well I can his name tell,

Men called him Arundel.

There was no horse in the world so strong
That might him follow a furlong."

Ladas is no Arundel in adventure, but Lord Rosebery's horse resembles the charger of Sir Bevis in being the champion of the equine race for his time. Of Ladas it may be said as Cromwell said of his Ironsides, “Truly he was never beaten." Alike as a two-year-old and threeyear-old, every rival has gone down before him. And that, it must be admitted, naturally intensifies the interest which any owner would feel in his steed.

AN IDEAL STEED.

Ladas, like most racehorses, has but little history. To begin with, he is but three years old, and the vicissitudes of life in three years, whether the life be human or equine, are but few. From his foaling up Ladas has been in every respect an ideal animal; nothing can be more admirable than his temper, the grace of his movements, and the natural perfection of his constitution. On the Derby Day his good temper and forbearance were put to a very trying test. When the result was declared, and as the Frime Minister of England was leading the winner of the Derby from the course to the enclosure, they were mobbed by an enthusiastically jubilant crowd in a fashion which severely tried the nerves of the owner, and which might have upset the equilibrium of any less well balanced horse. The multitude crowded around him, they patted him, they punched him, they sat upon his hocks in their enthusiasm, and to make matters worse, many of them filched hairs from his tail to carry away as mementoes. Now, even a man, if he is in the middle of a crowd which insists on pulling hair out of his head by handfuls, might be excused if he lost his temper; but Ladas was perfectly calm and did not injure any one. The incident was characteristic. A horse less equable might have crowned his victory by killing many of his worshippers. Ladas, however, took it all with easy nonchalance, which is characteristic of the saint, although even human saints might have demurred to the relic hunters beginning operations upon their persons even before they were dead.

THE MOST HUMAN OF HORSES.

Of the racing career of Ladas there is not much need to enter here. His success as a two-year-old was phenomenal, and as a three-year-old he has carried off one prize after another with astonishing ease. The Two Thousand, the Newmarket Stakes and the Derby have all fallen before him, and it is confidently anticipated that he will win the St. Leger. In that case Ladas will have had an unparalleled record

among racehorses, for no Prime Minister's horse has ever carried before it all the great races of the year. Ladas's record up to the first of July is as good as any that have preceded it, if indeed it is not the best that has ever gone to the credit of any horse, and even those who take no interest in racing can hardly refrain from hoping that this horse may finish as he has begun, and leave the turf with an absolutely unbroken record of victory. To those who are not racing-men a remark made by Lord Rosebery will commend the horse even more than the carrying off of the triple event. I was saying that I thought horses were the most human of all animals. Lord Rosebery said quietly " and Ladas is the most human of all horses." Whether he is this or not, he is the swiftest of all the horses of his year, and one of the most beautiful creatures that ever stepped on hoofs; and it is easy to understand that amidst the cares of State his owner should owe to Ladas the few gleams of sunshine which have lit up the somewhat arduous experiences of the last eighteen months.

III. THE OWNER OF ST. LADAS.

Lord Rosebery's experience as an owner of racehorses began in his early youth. Like most boys he was fond of horses, and he has not lost his love of them to this hour. This, if Emerson may be believed, may have contributed somewhat to that toughening of the fibre of his character and the strengthening of that resolute judgment, at which shallow-judging men at present are pleased to throw doubt. "I find the Englishman," said the acute New England observer, "to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom." The whole passage is well worth quoting:

The Englishman associates well with dogs and horses. His attachment to the horse is from the courage and address required to manage it. The horse finds out who is afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. Their young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the company of horses better than the company of professors. I suppose the horses are better company for them. The horse has more uses than Buffon noted. If you go out into the streets every driver in bus or dray is a bully, and, if I wanted a good troop of soldiers, I should recruit among the stables. Add a certain degree of refinement to the vivacity of these riders, and you obtain the precise quality which makes the men and women of society formidable. They come honestly by their horsemanship, with Hengist and Horsa for their Saxon founders. The other branch of their race had been Tartar nomads. The horse was all their wealth, the children were fed on mare's milk. The pastures of Tartary were still remembered by the tenacious practice of the Norsemen to eat horseflesh at religious feasts. In the Danish invasions the marauders seized upon horses where they landed, and were at once converted into a body of expert cavalry. . . . The severity of the game laws certainly indicates an extravagant sympathy of the nation with horses and hunters. The gentlemen are always on horseback, and have brought horsesto an ideal perfection. The English racer is a factitious breed. A score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently be seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as steep as the roof of a house. Every inn room is lined with pictures of races; telegraphs communicate every hour tidings of the heats from Newmarket and Ascot; and the House of Commons adjourns over the "Derby Day."