At length, after long weeks of waiting, Perugia disappeared in a gray deluge: the rain came marching like an army across the plain toward us; its first scattered drops printed the dust, its sheets of water drenched the windows, its small torrents rushed down the steep streets. The mountains grew dim and almost disappeared: we were shut in with hope and a fresh delight. Then the deluge settled into a gentle rain, under which the grapes swelled out their globes, the corn rustled with a fuller growth and the hearts of men grew content. The king and his ministers also budded out into new beauty, and flourished in popular esteem like the green bay tree, and the republic was quenched--till the next drought. _The Author of "Signor Monaldini's Niece._" HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE, TWO PAPERS.--I. [Illustration: THE RACE-COURSE AT LONGCHAMPS.] The passion for horse-racing, which for more than two centuries has made the sport a national one in England, cannot be said to exist in France, and the introduction of this "pastime of princes" into the latter country has been of comparatively recent date. Mention, it is true, has been found of races on the plain of Les Sablons as early as 1776, and in the next year a sweepstakes of forty horses, followed by one of as many asses, was run at Fontainebleau in the presence of the court. But it is not until 1783 that one meets with the semblance of an organization, and this as a mere caprice of certain grandees, who affected an English style in everything, and who thought to introduce the customs of the English turf along with the _chapeau Anglais_ and the riding-coat. It was notably the comte d'Artois (afterward Charles X.), the duc de Chartres (Philippe Egalite), the marquis de Conflans and the prince de Guemenee who fancied themselves obliged, in their character of Anglomaniacs, to patronize the race-course; but the public of that time, to whom this imitation of English manners was not only an absurdity, but almost a treason against the state, gave but a cold reception to the attempted innovation. Racing, too, from its very nature, found itself in direct conflict with all the traditions of the ancient school of equitation, and it encountered from the beginning the severe censure and opposition of horsemen accustomed to the measured paces of the _manege_, whose highest art consisted in consuming a whole hour in achieving at a gallop the length of the terrace of St. Germain. The professors of this equestrian minuet, as solemn and formal in the saddle as was the dancer Dupre in the ballets of the period, predicted the speedy decay of the old system of horsemanship and the extinction of the native breed of horses if France should allow her soil to be invaded by foreign thoroughbreds with their English jockeys and trainers. The first French sportsmen--to use the word in its limited sense--thus found themselves not only unsupported by public opinion,