THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1880. CANTERBURY EN FETE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2094, 9 November 1880, Page 2

THE GLOBE. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1880. CANTERBURY EN FETE.

Every country and language has its adage as to the advisability of occasionally throwing off the cares of business for the purpose of a short plunge into festivities. “ It is a poor heart that never rejoices ”: “ Dulce est desipere in loco,” &c., &c., are expressions of a feeling that it is well now and then to cast off dull care and all the worries and anxieties of life, and refresh the spirits with a little harmless amusement. Today Canterbury has commenced its little holiday, and has settled itself down to enjoy itself in its own peculiar fashion. That fashion is the fashion of the AngloSaxon race at large. Its base is sport. The sporting instinct of the race is shown in nothing more than in the fact that whenever there is a holiday, the piece de resistance is a race meeting. Other nations hold other ideas. A military review forms the basis of the Frenchman’s holiday. The Italian disguises himself in outlandish attire and pelts his neighbour’s wife with bon-bons. The German talks philosophy over lager beer in a beer garden. The Russian diversifies the graver work of shooting at his Emperor by rattling with a sledge party over the ice. The American devours an extra plug of tobacco. But to the Britisher a holiday is nothing without a race meeting of some sort. England has its Derby, Australia its Melbourne Cup, and New Zealand its Canterbury Meeting. Sporadic up-country meetings abound both in England and in the antipodes. In the former there are country meetings with their Farmers’ Plates and the minor steeplechases, where the gentlemen riders roll about in their saddles in a glorious state of uncertainty, or where spindle - shanked weeds take the most dangerous fences at racing pace to the imminent danger of their jockeys. In Australasia there are the thousand and one lesser meetings where the results are too often fore-gone conclusions, and where the youthful “ gum sucker ” or “ corn stalk ” cheerfully hands over his money to those whose business it is to know better than he does. In fact, the sporting instinct is so firmly rooted in the Anglo-Saxon mind, that racing of some description it must positively have. Not but what faint attempts are not made by other nations to try the effect of what appears to so thoroughly delight our race, but the plant does not flourish into native vigour. Visit, for instance, the racecourse in the Bois-de-Boulogno, under the frowning battlements of Paris’ strongest fort, and what do we see ? English jockeys, English bookmakers, for a great part English horses, and only the faintest possible attempt to carry out the “ humors of the course.” Gustavo does not see the point of Aunt-Sally; Adolphe does not even attempt to grapple with the pea trick. His solo and undivided attention is bent on amusing and petrifying the ladies in his immediate vicinity. He would be just as happy if the race were between jackasses instead of between thoroughbred horses. Ho has not been *tanght from his youth upward to regard a thoroughbred as a sort of divine animal. If an unfortunate Gallic jockey should happen to get “a leg up” what is tho

effact P Ho may got over the first flight of hurdles; possibly over the next fence, if a moderately low one; hut let him come to the water jump and he cries distractedly, “ Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu! where is the bridge ?” Like the Trojan seer of old, the foreigner does not believe in the horse. If the animal is not full of armed men, he is at least an abominably ricketty contrivance, good enough in an omnibus and not bad to eat during a siege, but it is much better fun loading him by the bridle than getting on his back. But to the Englishman a horse is all in all. Lady Godiva’s husband, whoso boots and general demeanour have been immortalised by our Poet Laureate, is not, wo fear, the only Englishman who has placed his horse higher in his affections than his wife. There is a story of an aged reprobate who, on his death-bed, calmly reviewed his past life. From his boyhood upwards his days had been devoted to the adoration of the fair sex and to the management of a racing establishment. Now was the time—when he was about to join his no-less-reprobate ancestors —that the truth must ho told. “ I think,” he murmured, with failing breath, “ that if I were to live my life over again, I would give less of my time to the ladies and more to my stud.” And so the old sportsman passed into those happy hunting grounds, where it is to be trusted that horses always run straight, and jockeys are never bribed. He was no doubt a dreadfully wicked man, but ho was a true Briton in one respect at all events. He was a lineal and worthy descendant of those warriors whose antics in their war chariots astonished the not otherwise weak mind of Julius Ccesar. But enough has been said of the devotion of the Englishman to his favorite sport. Canterbury to-day has donned her most gorgeous apparel, and gone en masse to the racecourse. The thoroughbred has laid himself out ventre-a-terre, and Canterbury has rejoiced with the exceeding joy of a community in its element.