acquaintance with her "native element," ere he discovers that she is over-masted" as a yawl she would be a far better sea boat." But your dandy-rig is unsightly; he lays her up for the season, and "next year lengthened, as a sixty ton schooner he will show you a stunner. It is almost Michaelmas before she is ready in her new character; "it's beastly work knocking about in the autumnal equinox." The Protean vessel is looked for in vain; but there is a whisper of a mysterious brig that is to make its appearance early in the following spring.

66

Like most other things, yachting, when its details come to be understood, is a much more simple affair than is generally supposed. The privileges which the member of a Royal Yacht Club enjoys, in that capacity, beyond the skipper of a fishing smack, are little more than nominal. He may make fast to an admiralty mooring, indeed, should it happen to be unoccupied, on the proviso that he lets go the moment a penant gives him notice to quit, and may winter his slops and spars in a government store, and the like-on paying for the accommodation. But as to his having any claim to the immunities, rights, or dignities of "the service"- tell that to the marines.,' The benefit bestowed, moreover, upon the science of naval architecture, in a national point of view, is very apocryphal. It is true the finest specimen of a merchantman in our carrying trade was built for a yacht. I speak of the Brilliant, put on the stocks by White, of Cowes, for the late Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, and now a Madeira packet. But that was an exception to the rule. The sport of yachting, as recognised and promoted by the great sailing societies, is one in which pleasure vessels, scientifically classed and handicapped, shall race against each other for certain prizes of value, presented for the purpose. The Royal Thames Yacht Club is very liberal in this respect, both in money and trophies; but will any one pretend that the breed of small craft on the Thames would be improved by adopting the models of the Mosquito or the Secret? The turf may have been the means of introducing a superior quality of blood into the English stud; but yacht racing in hulls put (or rather stuck) together for the sake of speed, and speed only in light weather, can never confer any practical science on the marine of this country. Nor is there any need that it should. The intelligence and enterprise of our commerce can take care of all that is necessary for its interests, and there is far more cant than fact or sincerity in the pretence or pretext of combining the "ulile dulci" in the present condition of civilization. Let business be upheld by men of business, on the principle and in the spirit of a trading policy-“ haud tali auxilio.

Sporting clubs, like all other human institutions, are capable of much improvement; but, with all their imperfections on their heads, they are social fasces of great worth and efficacy. They gather together men of similar tastes, or that affect particular tastes; excite them by conventional emulation, and flatter their prejudices and their egotisms. I take great content, as old Pepys used to say, in sitting perdue, and listening to the gossip of one of those rendezvous. Some sleek headed antique citizen, peradventure, is laying down the law about the last match. Suppose it one of the season reunions of that ilk, celebrated by the popular metropolitan river club. He is not troubling himself, good easy man, about the manœuvring when " going free" to the Nore, or during the "thrashing to windward" on the return to Erith; but his yarn is none the worse for that. It is like olives to your wine, the unction

with which he describes the array of pigeon pies and lobster salads in the cabin of the steamer. You hear him depose, 46 upon an affidavit," that the contents of the pasties could not have been rivalled "by the simplicity of Venus' doves," and that the fish and vegetable combinations were 66 uncommon, and no mistake." The bitter beer he pronounces to have been Bass's-"no gammon about it ;" and the port "was like the stuff that Simpson gives you-not the six, but the seven shillings a bottle." A pair of boon companions, considerably his juniors, are in an artistic argument as to the practical merits of the match. They are bedight in the uniform of the club (the antique man wears the button on his waistcoat only; their cigars scatter odours around, and their "grog too is made." How earnest is the tone and matter of their discussion! Their memories are logs of every slant of wind that breathed between Greenhithe and the Medway; their speech is as a recitative in unison, of the "luffing up." "easing off," "easing off," "wearing," "staying," and every other subtlety of sailing that took place from the "slipping" to "rounding" the winning vessel. They use no secrecy as to what ought to have won, and demonstrate what couldn't have lost, allowing their data and deductions to be correct. . . . You smile; but is not such trifling? harmless and as an antidote to ennui or a passage of goodfellowship, might not they (as well as yourself) go farther and fare worse?

The effort-unfortunately too successful-to make the turf a speculative profession will lead very probably to the more extended adoption of sporting clubs as alteratives. Without mounting the racehorse as a cheval de bataille, I may venture to assume that the men known as "legs," and common-I had almost said indispensable-to the race meeting, would hardly find admission into any society of gentlemen. I can promise them a rich crop of black beans if they try the Isle of Wight. Now racing and yachting are more nearly allied in their characteristics than any of our national sports. They are adopted, with but very few exceptions, by those who stand in need of strong excitement, or who desire "monstrari digito." They are pastimes which involve beyond all others public eclât. They are essentially allied to "pride, pomp, and circumstance." "The colours of the riders" and the club burgees have more to do with these notable pastimes " than is dreamt of in your philosophy.' Races and regattas are the great national sporting pageants. There are hunt balls and "company" to witness a coursing or a cricket-match, and on the Thames the oar's naumachia command large holiday gatherings; but the great popular sporting spectacles are the race and the regatta. The latter is, and has always been, a class diversion: cannot the former be put upon the same footing? The prizes offered for competition by vessels of certain denominations can only be sailed for by those entitled to hoist the distinguishing flags of yacht clubs-societies so recognized by the Board of Admiralty. How much of order and respect the course would gain if its business were similarly regulated! There are many yacht clubs: there might be as many racing clubs as would meet the convenience of the system. Their principle would of course be the same as that of all such societies: the members would be chosen by ballot after the usual course of anticipatory notice. The racing club would have this advantage over the yachting-that all its funds would be available for the purposes of the establishment. It would begin with sufficient resources for all its

sporting demands. If, as the case is with sailing societies, those for amateurs and patrons of the turf had their club houses at the great racing rendezvous, what facilities they would afford for the interchange of courtesy and the cultivation of friendly feeling-the soul and spirit of sporting life!

The plan is so full of promise that I may be permitted to follow its operations into their more minute details. Clubs will never succeed as private speculations: they must start on the principle of joint stock companies. This is the end and purpose of all club policy. The turf should be ministered to with the like social encouragements and financial precautions. We will suppose the metropolis provided with its racing club, and Doncaster, York, Chester, and other provincial head-quarters of the turf similarly situated. The professed yachtsman has his costume -the racecourse will look none the less picturesque or professional that its motley bravery is interspersed with a uniform, so to say, distinguishing those more intimately connected with the matter of the festival. The brown double-breasted "cut-away" and lettered gilt button is by no means an item to be despised in the mise en scene at Newmarket. The precedent of the Jockey Club may be conveniently followed, in the matter of dress, at all events. At Chester (let us imagine), hard by the walls, somewhere between the Water-gate and the Castle, commanding of course a full view of the Roodee, is a comely and commodious building, with an unmistakeable sporting air about it. That is the Racing Club House. It does not represent merely the county and city of that ilk, but the adjacent parts of the principality. There are several hundred members on the books, and during all the year round it is a pleasant lounge for those enabled to avail themselves of its liberal arrangements. In the race week it is the reunion of all that the boon festival is meant to promote and celebrate. Hospitality, frank courtesy, good fellowship, and honour make it their head-quarters. Grand Stands, such as they now are, have only very recently offered fitting accommodation for the "twice two thousand" who find enjoyment at the great national fête— a race. I would fain hope-not, peradventure, without some trust that I shall see it come to pass-that at no very distant day a club, with " local habitation and a name," will be found in every leading turf headquarters in the kingdom. Then will there be no longer need to talk of making bets legal contracts, and recoverable at law. Honour, the great gulf which separates the gentle from the vile, is the law whereof man's natural instinct is judge and jury. And why should there not be classification as well in social as in natural life? "The lamb," we are told, "does not lie down with the wolf:" wherefore should the gentleman be the companion and associate of the "leg"?

a

Order, which is attributed to us as an inherent quality, is the germ of the club-an institution indigenous to England. It has most beneficially affected all those divisions of society by which it has been adopted. We have political, commercial, scientific, and social clubs of all degrees and descriptions: the system has been proved to be a sound one, both in theory and practice. I repeat, then, my earnest hope that it may soon be generally applied to all our national sports; not nominally, but practically and peremptorily. Let us waive invidious reference, and deal with the principle. Our logic shall be that which Johnson sneered at

in the line

"Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat."