st of silk.
* * * * * *
Full many a hat is doff'd as he draws near,
For gentlemen themselves turn jockeys here.

We see him sitting there on his mount "impatient for the start, while
by his side, with equal pomp his lofty rivals ride," and anon the
signal is given, and they are off! "Bending thousands raise a rending
cry," and the incidents which accompany the exciting event are well
described in the following lines--

And while all eyes are fixed upon the goal,
The skilful lads from town are on the prowl,
Swift fly the steeds along the even green,
Bored by the bloody spur, and quickly seen
The champion full in front, and as he goes
He wins by half a head, or half a nose;
Then betting fair ones fumble for their purse,
Eager the trifling wager to disburse.
Alas! they've nothing hanging by their side,
Save but the string by which the bag was tied,
For through the silken dress a gash is seen,
Where the pick-pocket's impious knife hath been!

But others besides the fair sex were sufferers from the same cause,
while the "thimble-player" plied his trade and secured the attention of
some countryman with "cash in his fob and forward with his prate."

{135}

But old balances of this sort had a way of getting righted, and many
will remember the scene here depicted--

Thinking all safe, the sharper wends his way,
But soon his foolish dupes get up a fray.
* * * * * *
So the poor mortal, by the raging pack,
Receives the heavy throng upon his back,
Until he sinks, exhausted by their rage,
And finds, perchance, a lodging in the cage!

Such were the Royston Races during the present century. Their
abolition some twenty years ago, and the scenes of disorder and of shop
robberies in the town, which had marked the moribund stage of their
course, are too familiar to most Roystonians to need further notice
here.

From Royalty, down to the smallest stable or errand boy in the land,
prize-fighting, or "the noble art of self-defence," as it was
grandiloquently styled, was really looked up to as a manly and worthy
spectacle during the first quarter of the present century, and a little
later. When the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., did not think it
beneath his royal dignity to pet and encourage professional "bruisers,"
to attend the prize-ring, shake hands with Tom Cribb, the champion, or
drive through the streets