It is Monday--the Monday before the Derby Day, and a railway takes us, in less than an hour, from London Bridge to the capital of the racing world, close to the abode of its Great Man, who is--need we add! the Clerk of the Epsom Course. It is, necessarily, one of the best houses in the place; being--honor to literature--a flourishing bookseller's shop. We are presented to the official. He kindly conducts us to the Downs, to show how the horses are temporarily stabled; to initiate us into some of the mysteries of the "field;" to reveal to us, in fact, the private life of the race-horse. We arrive at a neat farm-house, with more outbuildings than are usually seen appended to so modest a homestead. A sturdy, well-dressed, well-mannered, purpose-like, sensible-looking man, presents himself. He has a Yorkshire accent. A few words pass between him and the Clerk of the Course, in which we hear the latter asseverate with much emphasis that we are, in a sporting sense, quite artless--we rather think "green," was the exact expression--that we never bet a shilling, and are quite incapable, if even willing, to take advantage of any information, or of any inspection vouchsafed to us. Mr. Filbert (the trainer) hesitates no longer. He moves his hat with honest politeness; bids us follow him, and lays his finger on the latch of a stable. The trainer opens the door with one hand; and, with a gentleman-like wave of the other, would give us the precedence. We hesitate. We would rather not go in first. We acknowledge an enthusiastic admiration for the race-horse; but at the very mention of a race-horse, the stumpy animal whose portrait headed our earliest lesson of equine history, in the chapters of the "Universal Spelling Book," vanishes from our view, and the animal described in the Book of Job prances into our mind's eye: "The glory of his nostril is terrible. He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted. He swalloweth the ground with the fierceness of his rage." To enjoy, therefore, a fine racer--not as one does a work of art--we like the point of sight to be the point of distance. The safest point, in case of accident (say, for instance, a sudden striking-out of the hinder hoofs), we hold to be the vanishing point--a point by no means attainable on the inside of that contracted kind of stable known as a "loose-box."