Palace at Sydenham has long been a favourite resort of pleasureseekers, wherein enjoyment may be found adapted to every taste, and at a cost within the humblest resources. At all seasons of the year the Crystal Palace affords a genial welcome to every

comer.

There may be added to the foregoing certain places of fashionable resort, not accessible to the public: such as Hurlingham, Hurst Park and Oatlands Park within easy reach of London; and also the country around Epping Forest, to see which it is best to go to Chingford (from Liverpool Street terminus) and thence stroll onward to the Royal Forest Hotel. From that pleasant rendezvous, a four-horse coach starts daily in the Spring and Summer Seasons for drives in the neighbourhood.

T is truly curious to contemplate the enthusiasm with which one branch of national education is pursued in England; that relating, namely, to the Natural History and Training of the Race-Horse. The schools in which these subjects are taught (it might be more correct to say "crammed") are the most democratic in the whole world; and their pupils may be numbered by hundreds of thousands. No question of rank, precedence, or intellect governs the election of the

professors, who are indiscriminately selected from all classes of society from lords to lacqueys. More frequently than not, the professors are self-elected, and no voice has ever been known to be raised in protest. A costermonger has equal chance with a duke, and a cabman with an earl. Among Regius Professors of this branch of the human Letters, by no means the least successful are the most illiterate in the land.

As in most other schools, the subject taught generally divides itself into one or more branches or sub-divisions of such subject taught, naturally growing from the parent stem; and it not seldom happens that, from one cause or another, aptness or dulness, liking or misliking, on the part of the pupils, just as, say, in Art, Music, Literature, Science or Commerce, the branchsubject is taken-to, studied and mastered with greater readiness and proficiency than the subject as a whole.

So in this matter of the Natural History and Training of the Race-Horse, the subject as a whole discovers fewer interested students and certificated graduates, than in its several branches or sub-subjects. Of these last, the most popular and ardently pursued is Betting-Betting on the running of the RaceHorse. The graduates in this particular accomplishment are more numerous by many thousands than all other graduates put together.

The disadvantages, nay more, the evils, arising from this enormous and persistent influx of students always towards one school has been frequently pointed out by authorities; but recently it has greatly occupied public attention in England. It has been discovered that Betting is a breach of the Eighth and Tenth Commandments and a curse. Not to seem flippant, we discovered that on Hampton Race Course years ago, when a gentleman made free with our winnings and bade us be d-d.

For the third time in four years the subject of Betting and Gambling came before a recent Church Congress. The Hon. and Rev. E. Carr-Glyn, a well-known London clergyman, related

what resolutions had been passed by convocations, synods and conferences; though he had to add that nothing practical had been done "to put an end to what is acknowledged to be amongst the curses of the age." Betting and gambling the reverend gentleman defined as positive breaches of the Eighth and Tenth Commandments.

The point of his paper most cordially cheered was, that betting and gambling are an abuse of Sport. We want a law, he says, to make a publication of the "odds" illegal; to put the bookmaker [Professor, mark you] on the footing of the keeper of a gambling table, or at least to make him take out a licence; to place all clubs under the supervision of the police ("Athenæum," "Senior United Service," and "Marlborough included, eh, Mr. Carr-Glyn?); to make betting in public an indictable offence; and to stop such corporations as those of Doncaster and Nottingham from setting apart space for betting purposes.

Another speaker, Major Seton Churchill, estimated that there are 10,000 professional bookmakers [Regius Professors, and Professors, that is] fattening upon the national vice of Betting.

"With a spontaneous cheer before he opened his mouth" (we are told) "the Dean of Rochester was, as may be supposed, quite in his element on the subject, upon which he hit out right and left." He denied that he had ever advocated sixpenny points at whist. Then he vigorously denounced gambling, and marvelled how any Christian father or husband could permit wife or daughter to join such a company as he (the Dean) had seen at Monte Carlo, or how any modest woman could endure it. When he heard a painted person at the station say, "Me and the Duchess has won a pot," he felt profoundly sorry for the Duke. Possibly the Duke and Duchess were painted images of the real thing. No vice is fraught with such degradations, says the Dean. He, however, defended bazaars and their raffles because they produce so much money for churches, hospitals and schools. Truly, the weakest argument ever advanced by

Very Reverend Dean, and one well calculated to give him over into the hands of his enemies. He had not much faith in the decrease of gambling and betting in the middle and lower classes until the purifying stream shall percolate from the upper stratum. At a certain Rochester Conference, where the same subject had been discussed, Mr. Horsley had said, "My Lord, if you will bring this matter personally before the Prince of Wales we shall be able to report progress." This remark being boisterously cheered, the Dean went on to add that although not many would be so ignorant, impudent and unjust as to ask his Royal Highness to retire from the race-course, the Prince might be entreated to lead a crusade against gambling and betting. Alas, poor Prince of Wales! The Very Reverend Dean did not conclude without recommending an appeal to Parliament for a law prohibiting all newspapers from publishing, not descriptions of Races, but Betting details and the odds.

Meanwhile, we go on as heretofore. The schools are flourishing and full to overflowing of pupils as ever, the Professors, Regius and the rest, no less eloquent and instructive. And once more it becomes the least pleasant part of our duty to gossip about Racing near London.

No races near London equal in popular interest those of the Epsom Summer Meeting, held at the end of May or the beginning of June. Any stranger who has taken part in this great gathering of Englishmen need not trouble to journey to another racecourse. He has looked upon the finest in the world with the exception of Newmarket, and if he has seen the "Derby" run, the remembrance of that scene will last a lifetime. To strict amateurs of the Turf, the Epsom Meeting is a mere national junketing. For serious racing they go to Newmarket, Doncaster, Kempton and Sandown. The Derby race is not what it was. It is no longer, as regards value, the one race of the year which it is the main object of every sportsman to win; and this being the case the strength of the field is declining a fact which in tself helps to diminish the number of spectators, While at