The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-11 00:00:00

officers still surviving who obtained the gold medal
for their services, having received that decoration
and two clasps for taking part in the engagement
at Salamanca, Badajoz (at the assault of which
was severely wounded), and the Pyrenees; he
also received the silver war medal and one clasp for
Busaco.

The buildings which have been in progress for
some time past at Shoeburyness, to serve the double
purpose of works of defence for the entrance to the
Thames, and at the same time to be used in the trials
of the various descriptions of ordnance, under the
direction of the Ordnance Select Committee, have
been at length completed by Messrs. Kirk and
Parry, the Government contractors at Chatham.
The embrasures, as well as the .whole of the build-
ing, are of the most solid construction, and calcu-
lated not only to endure the severe shaking to
which the entire mass will be subjected during the
frequent experiments to be made, but also to resist
any attack made upon, it. The form of the
erection somewhat resembles a parallelogram,
and being raised to a very inconsiderable height,
is scarcely perceptible at a distance. The entire
structure, however, is built of amazing strength,
the walls, formed of granite, being eight feet in
thickness, while to give increased strength to the
whole, and to render it as nearly as possible shot-
proof, these walls are again faced with wrought iron
10 inches in thickness. Platforms, with all the
newest improvements, have been made for mounting
two guns, and, as a Leries of important experiments
will shortly be commenced with the large Arm-
strong guns, these will befirst deposited there. The
embrasures are so constructed that the guns may be
fired during the experiments either along the shore,
seaward, or at .2% target ;laced on the marshes.
Should the newly-constructed fort be found to answer
the expectations confidently formed respecting it,
similar buildings, although on a much larger scale,
will be erected in the neighbourhood of the dock-
yards at Portsmouth, Chatham, and other places
where fortifications are about to be raised. In ad-
dition to the fort at Shoeburyness Messrs. Kirk and
Parry have also completed two massive targets, to be
used in the experiment) with the Whitworth and
Armstrong guns. These are of enormous strength,
and are believed capable of resisting the effects of an
801 b. or 100 lb. shot. Each target is formed of solid
oak, bolted together by bars of iron, the whole being
9 feet in height and 6 feet square. Notwithstand-
ing this thickness, a shot fired from one of the Arm-
strong guns passed completely through one of the
targets, without, however, causing any materia
injury.

ANECDOTES OF DONCASTER.

(From the Atherkeum.)

A day there, when the place was really in its
prime, was by no means an idle day for the gay
people who were generally making nearly a week
of it, and were often paying a guinea a night for
their beds. The men began the morning, if last
night's business had not incapacitated them, by
hunting—cub-hunting, if they could get nothing
better. They went out early, and were easily back
for the races by two o'clock. These over, they
dined, and went to the play—the capital York com-
pany supplying the actors, and the entire county
and some districts beyond furnishing glowing
samples of north of England beauty. This portion
of the hard day's toil or delicious pleasure, as some
thought it, being completed at a reasonable hour,
the elite of the audience repaired to the ball, and
so kept it up till the grey dawn of a coming Sep-
tember morning. The dissipation was compounded
for by small subscriptions to local charities and
religious societies—a course the spirit of which was
something akin to that of the famous Princess
d'Harcourt, who both gambled and cheated till
four o'clock in the morning, but who never went
to bed till she had received the Sacrament at the
hands of her chaplain.
Doubtless, many of the nobility, the most aban-
doned to the allurements or sport, were influenced
by principles superior to these. Among them we
may mention the Marquis of Exeter, who once
proposed that the race for the Ribblesworth Stakes
should not take place on the Monday, as, in order
to be present, he was obliged to do what he would
rather avoid—namely, travel on the Sunday. Gen.
Grosvenor, if we remember rightly, treated the
proposal with a laugh and a " rider," to the effect
that the Ribbleswortb. Stakes, in such a case, should
be thenceforth called the " Exeter Change !"
Queen Anne not only gave cups to be run for in
the North, but this remarkably placid woman was
very eager as a runner of her own horses on the
Turf. Pick's old historical _Racing Calendar, pub-
lished yearly at York, from 1709 to 1785, affords
evidence of this fact. The Queen entered her horses
at York, to run for her own cups ; but she does not
appear to have been fortunate. In July, 1712, her
grey gelding Pepper came in fifth and third, in
two heats, for her Majesty's nine hundred guinea
cup. In the following year her grey horse Mus-
tard ran seventh and fifth for a similar prize ; four
mile heats, it must be remembered, but the horses
weretsix years old. At the summer meeting of 1714,
Anne's bay horse Star won a plate of £4O value,
in four heats, thus lost and recovered—four, three,
one, one. This was the sporting Queen's last
triumph, one of which she was never conscious.
After this royal race had been run, " an express,"
says old Pick, " arrived with the advice of the
death of her Majesty Queen Anne, upon which the
nobility and gentry immediately left the field, and
attended the Lord Mayor (Win. Redman, Esq.)
and Archbishop Dawes, who proclaimed his Ma-
jesty King George the First, after which most of
the nobility set off for Loudon."
The splendour of the show at Doncaster culmi-
nated in our fathers' days, or in the spring time of
many of us, who remember, as if it were but yester-
day, when Petre's nowton beat Voltaire and Sir
Hercules. In these practical days the train simply
discharges waggon-loads of noble, gentle, and sim-
ple into the town. It was not so of yore. There
was then a gathering in its true and " gradual"
sense. The divers roads brought a diverse com-
pany. The great aristocracy of the country "pro-
gressed" to their lodgings or to the course, like
princes, in grand state coaches and six, with a
score of grooms as radiant as new liveries and old
ale could make them. There were their stately
masters, Rockingham and Fitzwilliam, Leeds and
Cleveland, Harewood and Wharocliffe, whose sons,
cantering along the roads in joyous groups, would
have made a body of cavalry as handsome as Pora-
pey's and less regardful of their beauty. Sons of
peers, many brothers together, young squires—all
lords of land, in hand or in hop* ; it was a pleasant
sight to see them ! Protestant or Catholic, there
was a general fraternisation, and the roads were
merry with them—Fairfax, Lane Fox, Markham
of Beccles, Middleton Chalonner, Vavasour, Bland
of Kippax, Mitton, the Gascoynes of Aberford,
young Conyers Osborne, and three or four of the
brothers Lascelles, the eldest of them a " curled son
of Clinias," and with a not more affable word for
Lord George Bentinck or Osbaldiston than for Mr.
Gully, who is riding down from Pontefract, and
through whose hat Osbaldiston, in, a duel, once sent
a ball. Better there, as Gully remarked, than
through his head !
Then what a gathering there used to be in the
streets on the Monday before the races commenced
Debrett might have found there nearly all his
" peers," Lodge his " baronets," and Burke all
his " commoners" of note. This sort of thing
was at its height in 1829, the year when Row-
ton won. We never saw the territory of
the old Saxon de Fossard—of Tostig, son
of Godwin—of Robert Earl of 11ortaigne—of the
Malolieus, or Mauleys—and, finally, of the Corpo-
ration of Doncaster, so brilliant as in that year,
when the famous Duchess of St. Albans held a little
court on the sunny side of the street, where Nor-
man and Saxon did homage to that queen for an
hour, ere all, moving off to the races, were encoun-
tered by dozens of tract distributors, solemnly pro-
nouncing that the road to the Course was the route
to Hades, and something beyond.
Altogether, there was occasionally a very mixed
society on and about the Course ; among the so-to-
speak professional habitues, men who made a busi-
ness of the pursuit there—who were actors rather
than spectators, and all of whom have disappeared
without leaving a successor in his peculiar line—
we may mention the old Duke of Leeds, redolent of
port—the white-faced Duke of Cleveland, " the
Jesuit of the Ring"—Mr. Ridsdele, ex-footman,
then millionaire, finally pauper—blacksmith Rich-
ardson, who, shaking his head at " Leeds," would
remark of himself, that sobriety alone had saved
him from being hanged—Mr. Beardsworth, who
had been originally
.a hackney-ceachman, now
sporting his crimson liveries—Mr. Crockford, who
commenced life with a fish basket--and the well-
known son of the ostler at the Black Swan, in
York, wearing diamond rings and pins, betting his
thousands, and looking as cool the while as if he
not only largely used the waters of Pactolus, but
owned half the gold dust on its banks.
The two extremesof the official men, as regarded
rank, were perhaps. Lord George Bentinck and Mr.
Gully, the ex-pugilist. The former introduced, at
Doncaster, the signal-flag to regulate the "starts,"