makes men show clear signs of acute mania.  If we look at the unadulterated absurdity of the affair, we may almost be tempted to rage like Carlyle or Swift.  For weeks there are millions of people who talk of little else save the doings of useless dumb animals which can perform no work in the world and which at best are beautiful toys.  When the thoroughbreds actually engage in their contest, there is no man of all the imposing multitude who can see them gallop for more than about thirty seconds; the last rush home is seen only by the interesting mortals who are on the great stand; and the entire performance which interests some persons for a year is all over in less than three minutes.  This is the game on which Englishmen lavish wild hopes, keen attention, and good money—­this is the sport of kings which gluts the pockets of greedy knaves!  A vast city—­nay, a vast empire—­is partially disorganized for a day in order that some dwarfish boys may be seen flogging immature horses during a certain number of seconds, and we learn that there is something “English,” and even chivalrous, in the foolish wastrel proceedings.

My conceptions of English virtues are probably rudimentary; but I quite fail to discover where the “nobility” of horse-racing and racecourse picnicing appears.  My notion of “nobility” belongs to a bygone time; and I was gratified by hearing of one very noble deed at the moment when the flashy howling mob were trooping forward to that great debauch which takes place around the Derby racecourse.  A great steamer was flying over a Southern sea, and the sharks were showing their fins and prowling around with evil eyes.  The Rimutaka spun on her way, and all the ship’s company were cheerful and careless.  Suddenly a poor crazy woman sprang over the side and was drifted away by a surface-current; while the irresistible rush of the steamer could not of course be easily stayed.  A good Englishman—­honour for ever to his name!—­jumped into the water, swam a quarter of a mile, and, by heaven’s grace, escaped the wicked sea-tigers and saved the unhappy distraught woman.  That man’s name is Cavell:  and I think of “nobility” in connection with him, and not in connection with the manikins who rush over Epsom Downs.

I like to give a thought to the nobility of those men who guard and rule a mighty empire; but I think very little of the creatures who merely consume food and remain at home in rascally security.  What a farce to talk of encouraging “athletics”!  The poor manikin who gets up on a racer is not an athlete in any rational sense of the term.  He is a wiry emaciated being whose little muscles are strung like whipcord; but it is strange to dignify him as an athlete.  If he once rises above nine stone in weight, his life becomes a sort of martyrdom; but, abstemious and self-contained as he is, we can hardly give him the name which means so much to all healthy Englishmen.  For some time each day the wondrous specimen of manhood must stew in a Turkish