I love my country, and I love horses.

Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary,--whom I saw run at Epsom,--over my fireplace.

Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever-so-few?
Though I never owned a horse, have I not been the proprietor of six equine females, of which one was the prettiest little "Morgin" that ever stepped?
Listen, then, to an opinion I have often expressed long before this venture of ours in England.
Horse-RACING is not a republican institution; horse-TROTTING is.
Only very rich persons can keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly as gambling implements.

All that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful, very,--OF course,--great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian," and the rest.

I say racing horses are essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables.