would not care to repeat the experience for any money.  Any given town will suit a competent observer, for I found scarcely any vital differences in passing from place to place.  It is tragical and disheartening to see scores of fine lads and men, full of excellent faculties and latent goodness—­and all under the spell of the dreary Circe of the Turf.  I have been for a year, on and off, among a large circle of fellows whom I really liked; and what was their staple talk?  Nothing but betting.  The paralysis at once of intellect and of the sense of humour which attacks the man who begins flirting with the gambling Enchantress struck me with a sense of helplessness.  I like to see a race when it is possible, and I can always keep a kind of picture of a horse in my eye.  Well, I have known a very enthusiastic gentleman say, “The Bard, sir, The Bard; the big horse, the mighty bay.  He’ll smother ’em all.”  I modestly said, “Do you think he is big enough?” “Big enough! a giant, sir!  Mark my words, sir, you’ll see Bob Peck’s colours in triumph on the bay.”  I mildly said:  “I thought The Bard was a very little one when I saw him, and he didn’t seem bay.  He was rather like the colour you might get by shaking a flour-dredger over a mulberry.  Have you had a look at him?” As usual, I found that my learned friend had never seen that horse nor any other; he was neglecting his business, loafing with wastrels, and trying, in a small way, to imitate the fine strategy of the Colonel and the Captain and Odysseus.  Amongst these bewitched unfortunates, the life of the soul seems to die away.  Once I said to a nice lad, “Do none of your set ever read anything?” and he made answer, “I don’t think any of them read very much except the Sportsman.”  That was true—­very true and rather shocking.  The Sportsman is bright enough and good enough in its way, and I read it constantly; but to limit your literature to the Sportsman alone—­well, it must be cramping.  But that is what our fine young men are mostly doing nowadays; the eager, intellectual life of young Scotchmen and of the better sort of Englishmen is unknown:  you may wait for a year and you will never hear a word of talk which is essentially above the intelligence of a hog; and a man of whom you are fond, purely because of his kindliness, may bore you in the deadliest manner by drawling on by the hour about names and weights, the shifting of the odds, and the changes of luck.  The country fairly swarms with clubs where betting goes on all day, and sometimes all night:  the despicable dupes are drawn in one after another, and they fall into manifold varieties of mischief; agonized parents pray for help; employers chafe at the carelessness and pre-occupation of their servants; the dupes sink to ruin unpitied, and still the crowd steps onward to the gulf of doom.  To think that by merely setting certain noble creatures to exhibit their speed and staunchness, we should have ended by establishing