and bewailed by the small fry of sporting literature.  All he had done in life was to deceive people by making them fancy that certain good horses were bad ones:  strictly speaking, he made money by false pretences, and yet, such is the twist given by association with genuine gamblers, that educated men wrote of him as if he had been a saint of the most admirable order.  This disposition is seen all through the piece:  successful roguery is glorified, and our young men admire “the Colonel,” or “the Captain,” or Jack This and Tom That, merely because the Captain and the Colonel and Jack and Tom are acute rascals who have managed to make money.  Decidedly, our national ideals are in a queer way.  Just think of a little transaction which occurred in 1887.  A noble lord ordered a miserable jockey boy to pull a horse, so that the animal might lose a race:  the exalted guide of youth was found out, and deservedly packed off the Turf; but it was only by an accident that the Stewards were able to catch him.  That legislator had funny notions of the duty which he owed to boyhood:  he asked his poor little satellite to play the scoundrel, and he only did what scores do who are not found out.

A haze hangs about the Turf, and all the principles which should guide human nature are blurred and distorted; the high-minded, honourable racing men can do nothing or next to nothing, and the scum work their will in only too many instances.  Every one knows that the ground is palpitating with corruption, but our national mental disease has so gained ground that some regard corruption in a lazy way as being inevitable, while others—­including the stay-at-home horse-racers—­reckon it as absolutely admirable.

Some years ago, a pretty little mare was winning the St. Leger easily, when a big horse cut into her heels and knocked her over.  About two months afterwards, the same wiry little mare was running in an important race at Newmarket, and at the Bushes she was hauling her jockey out of the saddle.  There were not many spectators about, and only a few noticed that, while the mare was fighting for her head, she was suddenly pulled until she reared up, lost her place, and reached the post about seventh in a large field.  The jockey who rode the mare, and who made her exhibit circus gambols, received a thousand pounds from the owner of the winning horse.  Now, there was no disguise about this transaction—­nay, it was rather advertised than otherwise, and a good many of the sporting prints took it quite as a matter of course.  Why?  Simply because no prominent racing man raked up the matter judicially, and because the ordinary Turf scramblers accept suspicious proceedings as part of their environment.  Mr. Carlyle mourned over the deadly virus of lying which was emitted by Loyola and his crew; he might mourn now over the deadly virus of cheating which is emitted from the central ganglia of the Turf.  The upright men who love horses and love racing are nearly powerless; the thieves leaven the country, and they have reduced what was once the finest middle-class in the world to a condition of stark putridity.