The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-28 00:00:00

groom or two, or his labour and money will be lost.
The list given above is exclusive of the numerous and
magnificent collection of horses and mules in the
royal stables at Madrid.

Heros nest enumerates the dismissals and ap-
pointments made in the household by him and M.
Arguelles. The persons filling the high situations,
and in nearest communication with her Majesty, are:
the Marchioness of Belgida, the Countess of Espoz y
Mina; the first as Camarera Mayor, and the latter as
her Majesty's governess, to whom I understand she
is particularly attached. On the removal of M.
Oribe, Patriarch of the Indies, from the office
of confessor to her Majesty, M. Busto, Bishop of
Tarragona, was appointed. The brother of the Duke
de la Victoria, M. Antonio Fernandez Espartero, an.
ecclesiastic, well known for his piety and the purity
1)f his morals, has been made one of the chaplains of
the Royal chapel.
Haring dispatchf•d the subject of removals and ap-
pointments in the household, awl the improvements
and repairs in the patrimony and palaces of her Ma-
jesty, M. Heron goes on to remark upon three impor-
tant points, namely, the property which Ferdinand
the Seventh had in shares in the Bank of San Per-.
nand° at his death, the secret purse or savings set
aside by Maria Christina, in 1833, out of her daugh-
ter's income., and which was carried on to 1840, and
lastly, on the existing doubt with respect to the share
of the jewel's and personal property of the late King,
which respectively belong to the Queen and her sister
the Infanta. What has become of the bank shares no
one seems to know or to acknowledge. Some docu-
ments, however, in the Intendant's office prove their
existence. A. like fate would seem to have befallen
the secret purse set apart for her Majesty. in the
eight years which this saving was being accumulated,
there entered the Royal Treasury for the purpose
371423/. sterling, of which the new banker of the
palace, on taking an account •of the treasury after the
abdication of the late Queen Regent, was handed over
no more than 4,4701. sterling. And lastly, the persons
charged with the guardianshipiof her Majesty and
sister, have no means of deciding, in the absence of
the proper documents, which appear to he missing,
the property left or belonging to the Infanta. In
such case it is but natural to suppose that the deci-
sion of the doubts in question, and the usual provision
for the Infanta, will be referred to the proper law tri-
bimals and Cortes of the country. ,
In the whole of the memoir, it is remarkable that
not one word derogatory to the conduct of the late
QUeen Regent, or of her management of the large in-
comes of the young Queen, is expressed. How much
of these incomes and of the jewels, &c. of the Crown
have been removed out of Spain,. the public are left,
out of respect to the young Queen, in complete igno-
rance. The repeat, however, of the Committee ap-
pointed long. since to inquire into the subject, will
one day or other throw some light on it.

ORIGIN OF HOUSE RACES IN
'• ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

We have no means of ascertaining the period at
Which horse-racing commenced in England. There
are, however, authentic records still existing, de-
scribing sofne races at Epsom during the reign of
Henry the Second. Under Henry the Eighth the
traces are somewhat more clearly defined. We learn
'that bluff Harry" was present at horse-races at
Chester and Stamford, where prizes were run for.
`They might have been called steeple-chases ; for
there were some rasping fences on the race-course.
The prizes were valuable only for the honour due to
the conqueror, who received a small wooden bell, or-
ui►neiltedi with flowers.

James the-First established a regular organisation
for those matters. There were fixed periods for the
races to take place. Race-courses were laid out at
Sewmarket, Croydon, and Enfield Chase, and a silver
bell was substituted for the trmer woolen one.
Cromwell—all Roundhead as he was—had a num-
ber of brood mares. As a sportsman, however, he
must how before his Equerry, whose famous horse,
Plaice's White Turk," is well known in the annals
of ancient sporting. -
After Cromwell came Charles the Second, and
from this period horse-racing may date the import-
ance which it has ever since maintained in England.
On coming to the throne, he found heavy chargers,
blowing like Grampuses, struggling against Flemish
hunters, which in the high and palmy days of Melton
would have been dubbed dray-horses. Charles, the
Merry Monarch, re-established the races which had
been instituted at Newmarket by James the First,
and which had been interrupted by the " crop-eared
knave" Cromwell. He also established the system of
giving prizes of value, awl set the example by giving
a silver cup, value 100 guineas, to be run for. The
era of thorough-bred horses may he said to have com-
menced under the reign of this jovial Prince. His
stahles contained some superb Arab stallions, and he
packed off his Master of the Horse, Sir Christopher
Wyvil, in search of some thorough-bred mares. Si_
Christopher set out on his travels, but whether he
went to Arabia, Andalusia, Persia, 't'artary, or India,
history saith not—certain, bowPvc-r," it is, that he
returned to England with a string of very beautiful
ware:, which were henceforth denominated the
• Royal Mares." •

.In the reign of Queen Anne, Arabian Darby, the
Lister Turf, which was bought by the Duke of Berwick at the siege of Buda, and tittrwar's hay Barb,
presented to Louis the Fourteenth by the Emperor of
Morocco, and eventually taken to England, obtained a
great celebrity in• England. Darby Arabian may be
considered as the sire of a breed of horses which have
,ever since remained unrivalled by other countries.
George the First and George the Second encou-
raged the breeding of horses ; but the eftbrts of George
the Second were seconded by his good fortune in se-
curing Godolphin Arabian, which was taken out of a
heavy cart, which he was dragging about the streets
of Paris, and was brought over to this country. The
French novelist, Eugene Sue, has already celebrated
the glories and misfortunes of this famous horse.
The race of English horses may he, therefore, satis-
faetorily traced to Arabia ; but in equine, as in other
nobility, the pedigree is ever fbund to contain some
admixture of plebeian blood.
In former days we were in the habit of putting
lialf-bred mares to thorough-bred stallions, but fortu-
nately the richness and innate " nobility," so to
speak, of the Arab blood absorbed all the vices of the
half-bred maternal blood, and the colts and fillies .
were removed into the illustrious category of tho-
rough-brtmls. For the last century this practice has dis-
continued, and simultaneously with it the Arab blood,
the primary principle of the thorough-bred stock, has
rarely, if-ever, been allowed the honour of admixture
with regular thorougk-breds. English thorough-
bred horses, when carefully trained under the eye of
.English trainers, have been found by experience to be
immensely superior to the Arab breed, that in all
handicap races several pounds weight is invariably al-
lowed to Arabian horses.

It would be tedious to go through the list of cele-
brated. names which .are to he found in the " Stud'
Poole," the first of which was published in 1753. We
may, however, note down Eclipse, who was born in
1754, and died in 1789, after having made his owner's
fortune, and leaving behind him 320 colts and fillies,
almost all of which showed themselves worthyof their
sire.

. If the English boast of the antiquity of their races,
they must yield the palm to France. The races
of Semur, a small town in the Cote d'Or, have
been carried on .since the reign of Charles V. one
• of the arrangements have undergone any alteration
ever since 1350. The races have always come off on
the same day, the Thursday after Pentecost. The
prizes have not been changed, viz., a gold ring, a
white scarf, a pair of gloves trimmed with golden
. fringe, and a pilnic containing forty 'francs. Cep-
,tury after century have these humble races:been always
looked. forward to at. the appointed day, by the inha-
bitants of the surrounding neighbourhood, but seve-
ral. ages elapsed before this premature. love of sport
was engrafted into other parts of France.' Before we
find the annals of any other races, we must leap from
1350 to 1776, from Semur to Paris, from Charleal%
to the Count d'Artois and the Due de Chartres.
The Due de Chartres went over: .to England,
. • 'where he was much taken with the English eustonis
and habits, especially their method of training
hors. On returning to France his Anglo-mania was
so Violent that he always appeared in public in tops and
leathers, and either a pink coat, or a Newmarket; his
WhOe time and attention Were given •up to horses,
betS, and jockeys, and the young nobles of the Court
were delighted at finding this wide field of pleasure
arid'excitement thrown open to them—the huge pow-
. kr4ii wigs, the red heels, the stuff coats and waist-
OcilS were thrown aside, and Paris looked like a vast
sititbleyard:
On. the sth of November, 1776, a match was got
npbetween the Due de Chartres and Major Bankes,
.I;,itt it did not come oft On the followinq days there
•„,,s, however, some
good running by Barbary and
C.nnus, belonging to the Count d'Artois, Partner be-
a ,longing to the Due d'Chartres, Pilgrim to the Due
it Lauzau, Nip to the Marquis de Conflaus. In all
rack?s Frenelthore L'Abbe, belonging to the
,
l'rince de (2,ueinen.ee.,.,,was the victor.
a,q-ani mid Abbe in 1777, when he beat
, eight English horses. On the same day the famous
.sweepstakes fog forty horses came of Y at Fointaine-
bleau. This was niAt a bad beginning for
noviciates
on the turf. A sweepstakes for forty horses in 1777,
when, in 1842, either in England' or France,
it is
rarely- we sse abOve fifteen or twenty at the start-
ing-post. •
But behind this apparent frivolity was hid a source
—France was • centuries
) )95 considerable rable public utility
Mnd :ier neighbours in the art of improving the
breeding of horses, and the French, like other chil-
. &etc', must be ainused while they are instructed.
. Napoleon, in the midst of his political projects and:
stupendous undertakings, ever found time to encou-
rage and foster this growing taste amongst the nobi-
lity.' In 1805 he gave prizes to be run for, and, in

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