The Derby day of 1834 was exceedingly windy and dusty.  Our party, riding on the outside of the coach, was half smothered with the dust, and arrived in a very deteriorated condition, but recompensed for it by the extraordinary sights we had witnessed.  There was no train in those days, and the whole road between London and Epsom was choked with vehicles of all kinds, from four-in-hands to donkey-carts and wheelbarrows.  My friends and I mingled freely in the crowds, and saw all the “humours” of the occasion.  The thimble-riggers were out in great force, with their light, movable tables, the cups or thimbles, and the “little jokers,” and the coachman, the sham gentleman, the country greenhorn, all properly got up and gathered about the table.  I think we had “Aunt Sally,” too,—­the figure with a pipe in her mouth, which one might shy a stick at for a penny or two and win something, I forget what.  The clearing the course of stragglers, and the chasing about of the frightened little dog who had got in between the thick ranks of spectators, reminded me of what I used to see on old “artillery election” days.

It was no common race that I went to see in 1834.  “It is asserted in the columns of a contemporary that Plenipotentiary was absolutely the best horse of the century.”  This was the winner of the race I saw so long ago.  Herring’s colored portrait, which I have always kept, shows him as a great, powerful chestnut horse, well deserving the name of “bullock,” which one of the jockeys applied to him.  “Rumor credits Dr. Holmes,” so “The Field” says, “with desiring mentally to compare his two Derbies with each other.”  I was most fortunate in my objects of comparison.  The horse I was about to see win was not unworthy of being named with the renowned champion of my earlier day.  I quote from a writer in the “London Morning Post,” whose words, it will be seen, carry authority with them:—­

“Deep as has hitherto been my reverence for Plenipotentiary, Bay Middleton, and Queen of Trumps from hearsay, and for Don John, Crucifix, etc., etc., from my own personal knowledge, I am inclined to award the palm to Ormonde as the best three-year-old I have ever seen during close upon half a century’s connection with the turf.”

Ormonde, the Duke of Westminster’s horse, was the son of that other winner of the Derby, Bend Or, whom I saw at Eaton Hall.

Perhaps some coeval of mine may think it was a rather youthful idea to go to the race.  I cannot help that.  I was off on my first long vacation for half a century, and had a right to my whims and fancies.  But it was one thing to go in with a vast crowd at five and twenty, and another thing to run the risks of the excursion at more than thrice that age.  I looked about me for means of going safely, and could think of nothing better than to ask one of the pleasantest and kindest of gentlemen, to whom I had a letter from Mr. Winthrop, at whose house I had had the pleasure