9W HORNBY AND BROUGH C. M. r8_626 4 1511 2011 50 10 T CALEDONIAN COURSING. MEFT. S 4 1027 5 15 No tie 09 11 F Hilary Term begins r8 38 610 045 1 19 s 4 1899 7 11 30 150

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13 First Sunday alt, Epiphany S 4NN 210 2 25 14 M Oxford Term degins

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THE NEW YEAR.

BY CRAVEN.

"I rest, then, here-not rich, but free;

With water from my spring; with bread of rye:
In gay saloons there's many a sigh-
There's many a laugh beneath the tree:

And I, for my part, laugh at anything,

I wept too long, 'tis time to laugh and sing;
For wiser now than in my youth, I hold
That in this tinsel world below,

In which our days so soon will have been told,
And where all things are empty show,
Content is better far than gold."

JASMIN.

Half of the nineteenth century is gathered to the past. How many of us shall be such as it is, long ere the other moiety be also numbered among the things that were! These are grave thoughts, for those especially with whom they are unfamiliar. Leaving out of question, as matter too reverend for these pages, the subtle sympathy between the mortal condition and the life to come are we not too apt to neglect, if not to read amiss, the human moral of "time and the hour?" " Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni." And wherefore" eheu"? Have not the years in their cycles done well by us? Look at the harvest of the half-century whose threshold we have just crossed. Progress is the patrimony with which the past endows the ages to be born-a heir-loom of the present descending by right of inheritance to the future. We grow in years, we grow in knowledge also; and as it is with the individual, so is it with the system. During the present century what marvels have been wrought for the convenience and embellishment of man's estate! Ours is the age of science, enterprise, and capital, leagued together for practical purposes, and the accomplishment of great social facts. Time has done it all." Greece and Rome put forth the flower and blossom; Britain has gathered in the corn and oil. Is our step less elastic, our strength less proud? Let us bear in mind that there are fairer things than blossom or flower, and better treasures than corn and oil. Such memory will give grace to the New Year so often as it shall be our fate to welcome its recurrerce. A cheerful spirit is the most grateful sacrifice the creature can offer to the Creator.

upon such sacrifice. The gods themselves throw incense."

Did the past twelvemonths bring sorrow and suffering in their train? call to recollection not alone the miseries but the blessings that marked their career; strike the balance, and be thankful. It is thus that wisdom teaches us to live on, drawing auguries of the future from experience of

THE NEW YEAR.

BY CRAVEN.

"I rest, then, here-not rich, but free;

With water from my spring; with bread of rye:
In gay saloons there's many a sigh-
There's many a laugh beneath the tree:

And I, for my part, laugh at anything,

I wept too long, 'tis time to laugh and sing;
For wiser now than in my youth, I hold
That in this tinsel world below,

In which our days so soon will have been told,
And where all things are empty show,
Content is better far than gold."

JASMIN.

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Half of the nineteenth century is gathered to the past. How many of us shall be such as it is, long ere the other moiety be also numbered among the things that were! These are grave thoughts, for those especially with whom they are unfamiliar. Leaving out of question, as matter too reverend for these pages, the subtle sympathy between the mortal condition and the life to come are we not too apt to neglect, if not to read amiss, the human moral of “ time and the hour?” “ Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni." And wherefore "eheu"? Have not the years in their cycles done well by us? Look at the harvest of the half-century whose threshold we have just crossed. Progress is the patrimony with which the past endows the ages to be born-a heir-loom of the present descending by right of inheritance to the future. We grow in years, we grow in knowledge also; and as it is with the individual, so is it with the system. During the present century what marvels have been wrought for the convenience and embellishment of man's estate ! Ours is the age of science, enterprise, and capital, leagued together for practical purposes, and the accomplishment of great social facts. Time "has done it all." Greece and Rome put forth the flower and blossom; Britain has gathered in the corn and oil. Is our step less elastic, our strength less proud? Let us bear in mind that there are fairer things than blossom or flower, and better treasures than corn and oil. Such memory will give grace to the New Year so often as it shall be our fate to welcome its recurrerce. A cheerful spirit is the most grateful sacrifice the creature can offer to the Creator. . . .

upon such sacrifice

The gods themselves throw incense."

Did the past twelvemonths bring sorrow and suffering in their train? call to recollection not alone the miseries but the blessings that marked their career; strike the balance, and be thankful. It is thus that wisdom teaches us to live on, drawing auguries of the future from experience of

the favour of the past. And thus let us go on our way, and pass through our pilgrimage rejoicing. Man's covenant with his Maker is faith.

Eupolis atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque poetæ,
Si quis erat dignus describi quòd malus aut fur,
Quòd machus fovet, aut sicarius, aut alio qui
Famosus, multâ cum libertate notabant."

Prominent passages in the pantomime of life, are legitimate themes for
the essayist. Peradventure he deals with them in a vein partaking of
the burlesque-philosophy is none the less sound because it is dressed
in motley. Seven years ago I had, or imagined I had occasion to write
as follows......" Any one who might take the trouble to examine a file of
the daily journals from the commencement of the present century would
find that we had in that period reached a great national crisis some four
or five hundred times. He will read that we are incontinently to be
annihilated for the want of bread," (at the present moment the Protec-
tionist papers assert that the glut of the necessaries of life must trans-
form this fertile island into a howling wilderness),
66 or that the threatened
inundation of corn will be as fatal as a second Flood. He will be
horror-stricken to learn how the streets of the metropolis are fast be-
coming desolate, while the lecture rooms of anatomists are as fat as lar-
ders at Christmas: and astonished by the assurance that the prosperous
state of our agriculture, and the flourishing condition of our commerce,
only the more surely proved that the ruin of the country was at hand.
With these facts before my eyes, and the admission that in quantity,
value, and excellence, the materiel of racing has reached a climax to
which it never before approached, people may think I am joking when
I assume that the present position and prospects of the turf are far from
ominous of its permanent prosperity."..... "But it is no joke for all
that on the contrary, it is a great question, and one that needs being
promptly and energetically dealt with. How does the present system
of English racing operate? It multiplies the chances against those who
keep race-horses, exactly in the ratio that they adopt the principle in
which it originated-namely, as a national sport, and the pastime of
gentlemen. What has, but as yesterday, been the result of the present
gigantic gambling in betting round? That the first men in the
land have started their horses to lose, and required large premiums for
allowing them to start at all. What think ye, country cousins, of the
pleasures of a young noble who employs a couple of clerks to keep his
betting books, and to lay their debtor and creditor account every morn-
ing on his breakfast table? What of the jocular phrase 'rope-making?'
which meaneth that the nag you have backed upon a proper estimate of
his qualities, is pulled' to qualify him for a handicap.'

Well, a lustrum and more has elapsed, and, to borrow the words of Lord Bolingbroke, "how shall we play the last act of the farce." The "gigantic gambling in betting round of seven years ago has increased and multiplied seven thousand fold. In lieu of the Norwich Telegraph, which then carried four in and twelve out, to Newmarket, on the occasion of the Meeting weeks," we have now special trains as long as Piccadilly, and as thronged as "the husbands' boats" to Margate in the dog days. In reviewing the racing season of 1840 I thus expressed my feeling upon the scheme of public betting-"All the legitimate purposes of the

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