The Express.
London, England, 1867-01-15 00:00:00

*parting intriligentr.
ALL EN .LAND VEIZSi S

THE DERBY

I\EW=IIKk.7.

TO THE EDITOR or THE EX PHD'S.

Sit:,—Newmarket may well bas cunlident about
beating all England on Epsom ltue us this year,when it can
lay claim to .a dozen that are likely to take part in the
contest. in. Naive of the Rake, It'Eatournel, the Hermit,
and the Er awn lot ; nevertheless, the Tykes are not to be
despistal, witi, their l'hutilit, Crawl Crust, and Ma-ter
Butterfly ; nor can it be said Itanebitry is much the worse
for haft t No quiet, it J. Day. party—like the Lambourne,
Exley, and ether stables adjacent—are not represented by
such er.• it card+ as heretofore. In the north the enthu-
siasm in favour of Plaudit is :tiniest tlllallillloll.' only
those who will direct their eyes Shame-wise before
a great event appealing to wave, in their :tilt:gl-
ance, for Al the ns that has been blown off
about a Lancashire 61 claimed by the northerners,
Dittettly ; and there can be tin 111.141/t that Wat-
son has a " clinker " to look :titer this time, whatever
National i; natal and Strathconan may have Alone in the
way of disappointiug his eli.me. IL.ving a longer string
of horses under his command than any of his brother
Tykes, Richitiend will probably ring with his name all
through the coming season, there ha ing several useful nags
at ltelleis! • 'sashimi Stratliconan, Plaudit, and the young
Pro,tor, airily each a i 41.10.1 thing (Y) for the Derby
of ; hut Watson has yet to learn himself what the
public an. anxious to keen about the crack—whether
he wi'i :day the Denby course. on Thormanhy's side
there e.ai he no doubt 1111,111 that score ; and the soft slot,
if any a ,ist, will conic from iteasible. who, if not a "con.
tire re.l/4•Vet ,;()L 1,14111 i. I a HAI.' C0U111,2
though site ,farted five (Imam time* after becoming three
years ..1.1. With respeet to Plaudit% performances and
** endo your know it is my opinion
tb. y a a good enough to stand upon ; /411 that with Snowdon
on his hack. :tad the le.eftil Newland to " assist "bin, in
the rice, I can only Luther observe that the Derby of Iraq
is little more than a question of the son of Plausible eon,-
relating tie• lei'. and a half. Middlehain claims a troop
numerims entmgh to make a stir, T. Dawson alone having
about a dozoi Derby horses, inclusive of the Corporal, the
Dean, Mandrake, Blinster Bell, and Tynedale, all birds of
motni4e or performance bust season. However, what with
the I.),:in's " dickey" legs, :thindrake's refusal to .10 his
best row and then, and Corpord's in-and-out doings,
they Can get nothing beyond the " dark " Priest in
the market, and the recollections of that frightful
inipestor Stabber arc too vivid for the public to inter-
fere with whatever game there might be playing with
the son of Romulus. Fobert has a better-looking than
performing horse in Bracken, whose ambition may not
soar above handicaps, if ho is as good as lie looks ; and
Osborne's stable is barren 0f anything worth even naming.
Melton, too, can soon he galloped over, .1. Scott coming
in for all the attention mowed, unless Skysail—beaten ant
of night by all the others iu a field of six nt Stockton—is
a second Virago. Mr. Itaines's Mahan was thought to
be superior to Lord Exeter's Grand Cress (nominated by
Lord Burghley) until he so tlisaTaced himself in the Crite-
rion, having been previously backed like another West
Australian, who singularly enough was most unaccount-
ably beaten in lii first orjagenient ; but " the West" did
not cut such a disgraceful figure at Newmarket as Tara-
ban, and I ninst confess to not quite understanding
the D.Tby pretensions of Mr. Bowes's colt, though
the world has evidently not seen what stuff he
is really made of. To follow the Gran.l Cross
it i- easier to reconcile one's conscience, as the Brother
to Knight of the Crescent did heat Friponnier somehow
when very backward in preparation—a performance about
as good :1.4 D'Extournere at Lewes—and on that account
must take a high-clam certificate. No fears exist as to his
being stone day disqualified for the Derby, even should he
be for the Two Thousand ; and it is le impression the
followers of John Scott will find their "books" look very
well in. teed on the Derby day, the chance of Grand Cross at 25
to 1 laing quite as good its that of the Rake at II to I. It is
not often Lancashire given us a Derby favourite ; hut Mr.
Eastwuo,l's mysterious lot, in private training, is located
at Clithero, and enough money has conic from some people
in Flipped°, Master Butterfly to betray that there is
something more than his Kettledrum and Butterfly blood
in him. Still, the talk about others in the same inte-
rest, Lord Hastings and Mussutman—both sous of
Little Hastings, as Little Knowu to the public
as his sire—has at times been the reverse of flat-
tering to the Butterfly, who cannot represent me in the
north, even as an outsider, whist Grand Cross is ready
for battle.

Round Lambourne they have nothing better than the
uncertain Marksman to build their hopes upon, and he
appears to have tired out nearly all his patient friends
since he disgraced himself behind Vauban, notwith-
standing that both his late and his present trainer hold '
the highest opinion of him. Mr. Merry has certainly
been rather unfortunate with his Derby cracks since he
ran first, second, and third in three consecutive years with
Tisorinsuby, Dundee, and Buckstone ; for, though
Scottish Chief did save his "situation" in '64, he was
done with after Ascot, and for the past two seasons the
Moseley winter cracks, Liddington azd Student, went all
to pi,ces. But Mr. Merry has at least a sound horse in
Marksman, and one that ought to stay, there being many
more unlikely things to occur than a boy in
yellow doing the trick on the 22nd of next
May. There are not many other Derby horses in
private training worth looking after, Palmer being about
the best of them, and he is more " uncertain " than the
yours z Shot, halv performed worse every time he
as, tried,
, after the thing at Ascot, his fourth and final
effort was neither more nor less than wretched. His
three defeats, at the same time, occurred within a space
of less than a fortnight ; and if :iit Joseph really were
venturing to run the young Beadsman in a delicate state
of health, he may yet surprise the knowing ones, like his
tire did after an unsuccessful two-year-old career. Lord
Stanford's Sir Oliver, a son of Stockwell and a Harkaway
mare celled Maria, may possibly turn up the best of the
untried lot in '67, as Archimedes did in Breadalbane's
nar. ; yet it is bard to tell what has been going on at
Lavine since the reports were abroad of his being amiss,
and as it would never do to trust Arundel for a ' line "
when the proper time conies, he nowt do something in
public to step out of the outside rank. Mr. Bevill's Usurper,
Messrs. Graham and Stevenson 'e Stradbroke, Beanstalk,
Stackmar. and Huntsman, and Sir F. Johnstie's Scaven-
ger and Leading Suit, may now be called in private hands,
as their trainers have only two employers each, and to get
at what they are doing would puzzle the most cunning
horse watcher. Usurper we have seen in public, with
Leading Suit also, the pair being of the " 'atomising" sort,
though they never got beyond an "0;" but the others
are all fearfully dark, and I can only hint that from the
blood in the veins of Strailbroke, Beanstalk, and Stock-
mar, it will be strange if one is not a Tartar. In the
same swim there is the promising Huntsman, who may
be useful some day in a " trial," though it is pro-
bable speed will be the forte of a son of Orlando
and Lady Blanche. There are many besides those just
named Wham performances cannot, for certain, be taken
as fair criteria of their real merits, and I should not be
surprised to see Lord Bateman's Anchorite, Mr. J. Morris's
Ailesbury, Lord Westrisorlend's Timolaus, Lord Allen.
bury'', colt, by Lord of the Isles, out of Splitvote, Mr. A.
Taylor's Adam Bede, and Mr. Spencer's colt, by Rattle, out
of Chanionnix, recorded as winners next season ; but these
are all in public stables that may contain rivals better
qualified to take part in the Derby, respectable doers like
Sir R. Bulkeley's ()wain Glyndwr (a most improving colt)
and Mr. Thellusson's Pirate Chief. being stable companions
respectively of Timolaus and the Chamounix colt, whilst to
bard safe the other two of A. Taylor's, there is Mr. Payne's
Captain Kidd—quite as good looking as the ;lt
vote colt, and a much better doer. The Reading
performance of this young Buccaneer, when he can-
tered home before Commissioner, Jeannie Deans, and Mis-
fortune, was excellent, and I shall retain him to keep
in cheek all second or third rate performers like Mr.
Brayley's Dick Turpin, Mr. Bats,n s MlA:amour, Sir F.
Johu.tone's Freemason (in the Leading Suit division). Mr.
Wyndham's Golden Bloom, Mr. R. Herbert', Prodigal,
The Irish Prospector, Lord Coventry's Resene, Count
Battliyany's Itus in Urbe, and Prince de doltykoffis
Serino Witte=
- • ... . . . . .

It ;ill puzzle John Day to find one better than Captain
Kidd in his numerous lot, unless his dark pack are superior
to tite exposed card., and it cannot be said that the fol-
lowing list of the Danehury muck.. any par-
ticular favourite, public or otherwise:—The Duke of
Reaufort's Vauban and Caucasus, the Marquis of Hastings'
Ince and Unitas, Mr. Wilkinson's Fsirteld, and Lord
irshri lge's Distal. The three last named are strangers,
and have in turn been better favourites than
Vauban is now, it having once been generally
understood that Unitas was a " clipper." Ines
did so well with Wroughton and Vauban at York, and
with Moleskin at Newmarket, as to prove herself quite
capable of telling the Marquis what this ruse can do,
and I like his blood much better than the more favoured
Distin's for a long course ; still, there is everything to
indicate that the stable are sweetest upon the Duke of
Deadfort's colour., his grace's two Muscovites having good
look, to boast of, though Vauban is the greater hero of
the twain. And he never reached the top of the tree ex-
cept by accident, the merit of his two greatest victories
being considerably detracted from by certain circum-
stances that must not be overlooked on any account. For
instance, up to, and long after, the time he just managed
to ei‘e Friponnier 31be., the latter had shown himself to
be far more than :fibs. inferior to D'Estouinel, Marks-
man, liippia, Knight of the Garter, and Grand
Cross, directly or indirectly ; and there were fair
enmities again for every one that he heat in
the Newmarket Troy except Julius, who was never
a great doer. A " game 'tin " to the backbone Vauban
doubtless always will he, six of his seven victories being
accomplished by from a head to a length only ; but it must
be doubted that be can stay, after all, and I am afraid J.
Day will have to find something a little better than
Vauban to win the Derby with.
What there really is in the " dark" horses in obscure
stables must be always a mysterj, Mr. Cartwright's Thorn-
apple and Lord Portsmouth's Mild Moor having been put
up mid knocked down again by the market operators as
though they had nothing but their good pedigrees to boast
of, whilst the non.performing foreigners not belonging to
Count F. de Lagrange have yet to be seen even by the
" touts" in this country, and at present there has been no
sign of either the well-bred Biscaien or Ferragus (both
Fitz-Gladiators), or Flamhant or Rotterdam. How.