turf. Saraband was a very good horse, and his two-year-old career was a brilliant one; Mill Stream was a fortunate purchase. We have not space to enumerate all the victories of the white and gold stripes, nor a list of his horses in training, but we can say here that some of his pleasantest hours are those when he feels he can put aside, for a short space, the many calls on his time, and watch the work done by Percy Peck's string on the Warren Hill,

The covers at Childwick Bury give their owner many a day's good shooting, of which he is very fond; but a rather celebrated trout stream-the lea, running through the estateremains unwhipped by Mr. Maple; at least, he is not a fisherman. But he always welcomes, with the hospitality that is part of his nature, Mr. Sworder and the members of the Old Hertfordshire when they come, as they frequently do, to Childwick Bury, and Miss Maple, his only daughter, is not only a good rider, but understands and is fond of the noble science. That he is a generous landlord, a liberal supporter, not only with money, but with the time and energy devoted to many a good cause, those who know him best bear the fullest testimony. St. Albans is proud of its neighbour, not because he is a wealthy man acting as a steward of that which God has given him, but because the recipients of his bounty and forethought know that the gifts come from the heart of the donor. "Here," says one who knows him well, "he has made his name a household word by generous deeds scattered among many classes." The Roman poet said money was either a slave or a tyrant, but Christianity teaches us to make it play a better role, and Mr. Blundell Maple has learnt in that school.

A Visit to Whitewall.

WHEN Mr. John Bowes, after passing so many years of his life in Paris, came over to die at Streatlam Castle, in the autumn of 1885, many people were under the impression that the last of John Scott's old employers had passed away, and that there remained not one of those owners whose victories in the classic races of Newmarket, Epsom, and Doncaster had carried the name and fame of Whitewall to the uttermost ends of the earth. They forgot that Lord Falmouth had, for several years of his racing career, been a patron of the Whitewall stable; though this slip of memory was the more excusable seeing that his horses ran at that time under the assumed name of "Mr. Valentine." But the recent death of one who may, in no idle words of flattery, be classed among the finest

and truest sportsmen that ever trod the British turf, has recalled to the recollection of those who have forgotten it, that the two last winners of great races trained by "The Wizard of the North," as John Scott was fondly termed in sportloving Yorkshire, were the mares which may be said to have laid the foundation of Lord Falmouth's racing fortuneHurricane, winner of the One Thousand Guineas in 1862, and Queen Bertha, winner of the Oaks in 1863.

If this fact had been forgotten elsewhere, it assuredly had not been at Whitewall, where the widow of the late John Scott treasures up the various souvenirs which recall the glorious past both of Whitewall and of Malton. For with Scott himself the sceptre passed away from Malton, seeing that-but for the chance victory of Jenny Howlet in the Oaks of 1880-not one of the great three-year-old prizes has come to the little town on the banks of the Derwent since Blair Athol won the Derby and the St. Leger a quarter of a century ago. It was imagined that Jenny Howlet's son would, during the past year, have trodden in the footsteps of Blair Athol, but "Chittabob

was never to greet the ears of "happy Malton," and the most hopeful are beginning to despair of another Derby or St. Leger being brought back to Highfield or to Spring Cottage. To Whitewall itself no race can ever come, for although the famous stables remain just as they were during the lifetime of John Scott, his widow-who some time ago refused a very tempting offer from Mr. Robert Peck, himself a Maltonite born and bred-has never allowed them to be occupied. It has been my privilege, upon two or three occasions, when on a visit in the neighbourhood, to wander through the boxes and the yards, and it is impossible to repress a feeling of regret as one stands there alone, in the stillness of the evening hour, and recalls to mind the busy and joyous scenes which these stables have witnessed-the home-coming of winners like West Australian, Stockwell, and Newminster, and the Christmas feasts for which Whitewall was famous. All this is gone, and the only material evidence left of the many Whitewall triumphs are the paintings in the house-of which I shall have something to say presently-and the stables in which the horses stood. There could have been nothing ostentatious or smart about the Whitewall stables, even when they were in use, but they must have been well built to resist the corroding effects of time and neglect, as they have done, and the stables are supplemented by a number of other buildings, in which the men and boys lived, and in which their food, as well as that of the horses, was all prepared. The Whitewall establishment was, in fact, a little world in itself, and you may still see the empty chamber which was used as a refectory, and the long, low saddle-room, where, on Christmas Day, John Scott spread "the fatherly feast," to which all who

had any connection with the stables were freely bidden. There have been many "sounds of revelry by night" in the transformed saddle-room, and so, by force of contrast, the silence amid which these memories are evolved seems all the deeper.

But, depressing as is the aspect of these deserted stables, more painful still is it to mark how the remorseless hand of time is wiping out the records of the famous horses which have, at various periods in the history of Whitewall, occupied the different boxes and stalls. Whenever a horse trained at Whitewall made his mark in the world, or rather on the turf, John Scott had one of his plates put up on the door of his box, the plate itself being surmounted by a little picture of the horse and jockey, with the colours of the owner, while underneath were inscriptions of the races which the horse had won. These plates are so numerous that I abandoned the attempt to count them; but as John Scott trained sixteen winners of the St. Leger, eight each of the Two Thousand Guineas and the Oaks, five of the Derby, and four of the One Thousand, to say nothing of many other horses almost equally famous, it may be imagined what an interesting chapter of turf history might be written. I say "might" advisedly, for these plates, many of them exposed to the rain and wind, are rapidly disappearing. Some of them have dropped off; others, it is to be feared, have been wrenched off and carried away for the interesting mementoes which they are; while the majority of those which remain are undecipherable. It is a pity that they have not been preserved, and perhaps even now Mrs. Scott will be prevailed upon to have those which are still legible put out of harm's way. They tell a story of which she may well be proud, for the earliest of them goes back to the year 1827, when her husband won the first of his sixteen St. Legers with Matilda. This daughter of Comus was the property of the Hon. E. Petre, for whom Scott won the great Doncaster race three years running, as The Colonel and Rowton successful in 1828 and 1829, the former having succumbed in the Derby, after a dead heat with the Duke of Rutland's Cadland. It was not until 1835 that John Scott won his first Derby, and the winner was Mundig, the property of Mr. John Bowes, who had not long left Cambridge, and was just embarking upon what was destined to be at first a very successful career as an owner of horses. Between the years 1835 and 1853 Mr. Bowes won the Derby four times: with Cotherstone in 1843, with Daniel O'Rourke in 1852, and with West Australian in 1853; while it need hardly be said that Cotherstone won the Two Thousand Guineas as well, and that West Australian was the first horse to land the treble event of Two Thousand, Derby, and St. Leger—a feat which only Gladiateur, Lord Lyon, and Ormonde have since paralleled, unlucky as Donovan was not to achieve it this year. It is a curious thing

were

that, with all the good horses John Scott trained, General Anson's Attila (whose picture is one of the first which catches the eye upon entering the drawing-room at Whitewall) was his only other Derby winner; but in the palmy days of Whitewall, it was no easy matter to bring horses from Yorkshire to Epsom or Newmarket, and this is why he was so much oftener successful in the Leger. A fortnight was about the time occupied in a journey by road from Malton to Newmarket. Now, thanks to the admirable train services of the North Eastern and the Great Eastern, a horse can be boxed at Malton about nine o'clock in the morning, and be galloping on Newmarket Heath at three o'clock the same afternoon.

It would need more than one number of BAILY to record, even in the brief, the tale of John Scott's most famous victories; but among the plates which time has spared is that of Touchstone, whose victory in the St. Leger of 1834 was the first of three gained for the grandfather of the Duke of Westminster, the two others being won by Launcelot and Satirist in 1840 and 1841. What a period those five years between 1838 and 1843 were! In 1838 and 1839 the St. Leger went to Whitewall by the aid of Lord Chesterfield's Don John and Major Yarburgh's Charles XII., the latter winning after a dead heat with Euclid. In 1840 and 1841 Launcelot and Satirist were victorious in the same prize; in 1842 Meteor won the Two Thousand for Mr. Bowes, and Attila the Derby for General Anson; while in 1843 Cotherstone landed the double event of Two Thousand and Derby for the "old beggar in black." During the same period John Scott had won the Oaks of 1839 for Lord Chesterfield with Industry, and for Lord Westminster, in 1841, with Ghuznee; and the series was carried on in 1844 by another Oaks victory with General Anson's Princess, and in 1845 by the famous son of Irish Birdcatcher. That son-need I add?-was The Baron, whose Leger victory was but a prelude to that of his son, Stockwell, in 1852. This was also a great year for Whitewall, as if Stockwell went down in the Derby, Daniel O'Rourke none the less brought it to Whitewall; while Stockwell himself won the Two Thousand for Lord Exeter, and Songstress the Oaks for John Scott himself. The year previous had also been a great one for Whitewall, as Iris had won the Oaks for the late Lord Derby-to the last, one of the staunchest friends John Scott possessed-and Newminster, destined to be Stockwell's greatest rival at the stud, the St. Leger. Four times between 1853 and 1862 did the Doncaster race go to Whitewall, for in 1856 the owner of Newminster again won it with Warlock, and in the following autumn Impérieuse-who had beaten Blink Bonny in the One Thousand, but had been defeated by her in the Oaks-scored the deciding game over the Town Moor, amid a scene of excitement which scarcely

had its parallel when, four years later, Caller Ou made amends for Blink Bonny's defeat by beating the Derby winner, Kettledrum. Then Sir Charles Monck's Gamester beat a moderate lot in 1859; and last, though by no means least, of the sixteen Leger winners came The Marquis, who, after winning the Two Thousand, in the same week that Hurricane scored for Lord Falmouth the first of his four victories in the One Thousand, was so unexpectedly beaten by Caractacus at Epsom. The struggle between The Marquis and Buckstone, at Doncaster, and the grand display of horsemanship between Tom Chaloner and Fordham, will never be forgotten by the surviving witnesses of that memorable contest, and it was a singular coincidence that both these horses should have been expatriated-Buckstone to China and The Marquis to Australia-although the latter did not leave the land of his birth until he had become the sire of a filly named Pompadour, who won John Scott the last race in which his colours were ever carried, this race being, in fact, run the day before his death. There are other plates on the Whitewall doors which commemorate the departed worth of horses that, in their day, were not less famous than many a winner of the Derby and St. Leger; such, for instance, as Velocipede, whom John Scott always declared to be the best horse he ever trained, and whose trial over the old racecourse at Black Hambleton with The Colonel and Mameluke proved so fatal. The great deeds of Hetman Platoff and Toxophilite, of Epirus and Canezou, are brought back vividly to the memory as you ponder over the inscriptions on these storied portals; more vividly still, if you pay a visit to Mrs. Scott, and are shown the magnificent pictures, by Herring and Hall, of the horses which once occupied the adjoining stables.

Mrs. Scott possesses, of course, a fine collection of racing cups and other trophies won by, or presented to, her husband; but Whitewall is a lonely spot, and burglars are enterprising, so this plate is in safe custody elsewhere. But Mrs. Scott or her niece will show you many interesting_souvenirs, including a small Russian bell, presented to John Scott by the Czar Nicholas after his visit to Ascot, and-strange contrast of donors!-a snuff-box made out of a horse's hoof, and the gift of Mr. Edwin James, Q.C. But it is the pictures which sorely tempt to a breach of the tenth, if not of the eighth commandment, and, ignorant as you may be concerning the principles of art, you instinctively feel that you are in the presence of a master when you look at the portraits of Rowton, The Colonel, and others of Mr. Petre's horses; of Lord Chesterfield's mares, Industry and Princess; of Attila, with John Scott's brother "Black Bill," in the all white of General Anson; and of John Scott's own mare Cyprian. Nor must you fail to see the pictures of the dog and