but alone in the midst of an actively-hostile community, and no one can say how the unequal contest might have ended had not the graver events of the Revolution intervened to put an end, for a time at least, not only to the luxurious pleasures, but to all the hopes and ambitions, of the noble class of idlers. The wars with England that followed retarded for a quarter of a century the introduction of racing into France. The first ministerial ordinance in which the words _pur sang_ occur is that of the 3d of March, 1833, signed by Louis Philippe and countersigned by Adolphe Thiers, establishing a register of the thoroughbreds existing in France--in other words, a national _stud-book_, by which name it is universally known. The following year witnessed the foundation of the celebrated Society for the Encouragement of the Improvement of Breeds of French Horses, more easily recognized under the familiar title of the "Jockey Club." The first report of this society exposed the deplorable condition of all the races of horses in the country, exhausted as they had been by the frightful draughts made upon them in the imperial wars, and concluded by urging the necessity of the creation of a pure native stock, of which the best individuals, to be selected by trial of their qualities of speed and endurance upon the track, should be devoted to reproduction. This was the doctrine which had been practically applied in England, and which had there produced in less than a century the most important and valuable results. France had but to follow the example of her neighbor, and, borrowing from the English stock of thoroughbreds, to establish a regular system of races as the means of developing and improving the breed of horses upon her own soil. This reasoning seemed logical enough, but the administration of the _Haras_, or breeding-stables--which is in France a branch of the civil service--opposed this innovation, and contended that the only pure type of horse was the primitive Arab, and that every departure from this resulted in the production of an animal more or less degenerate and debased. The reply of the Jockey Club was, that the English thoroughbred is, in fact, nothing else than a pure Arab, modified only by the influences of climate and treatment, and that it would be much wiser and easier to profit by a result already obtained than to undertake to retrace, with all its difficulties and delays, the same road that England had taken a century to travel.