Chantilly is the birthplace of racing in France. In the winter of 1833--the same year which also witnessed the foundation of the Jockey Club--Prince Labanoff, who was then living at Chantilly, and who had secured the privilege of hunting in the forest, invited several well-known lovers of the chase to join him in the sport. Tempted by the elasticity of the turf, it occurred to the hunters to get up a race, and meeting at the Constable's Table--a spot where once stood the stump of a large tree on which, as the story goes, the constable of France used to dine--they improvised a race-course which has proved the prolific mother of the tracks to be found to-day all over the country. In this first trial M. de Normandie was the winner. The fate of Chantilly was decided. Since the suicide--or the assassination--of the last of the Condes the castle had been abandoned, the duc d'Aumale, its inheritor, being then a minor. The little town itself seemed dying of exhaustion. It was resolved to infuse into it a new life by taking advantage of the exceptional quality of its turf. The soil is a rather hard sand, resisting pressure, elastic, and covered with a fine thick sward, and of a natural drainage so excellent that even the longest rains have no visible effect upon it. On this ground--as good as, if not better than, that at Newmarket--there is to-day a track of two thousand metres, or a mile and a quarter--the distance generally adopted in France--with good turns, excepting the one known as the "Reservoirs," which is rather awkward, and which has the additional disadvantage of skirting the road to the training-stables--a temptation to bolt that is sometimes too strong for horses of a doubtful character. For this reason there is sometimes a little confusion in the field at this point. Before coming to the last turn there is a descent, followed by a rise--both of them pretty stiff--and this undoubtedly has its effect on the result, for the lazier horses fall away a little on the ascent. Just at this point too a clump of trees happens to hide the track from the spectators on the stands, and all the lorgnettes are turned on the summit of the rise to watch for the reappearance of the horses, who are pretty sure to turn up in a different order from that in which they were last seen. This crisis of the race is sometimes very exciting. A magnificent forest of beech borders and forms a background to the race-course in the rear of the stands; in front rise the splendid and imposing stables of the duc d'Aumale, built by Mansard for the Great Conde; on the right is the pretty Renaissance chateau of His Royal Highness; while the view loses itself in a vast horizon of distant forest and hills of misty blue. The stands are the first that were erected in France, and in 1833 they seemed no doubt the height of comfort and elegance, but to-day they are quite too small to accommodate the ever-increasing crowd. The stands as