Tiverton, who is completely behind the scenes, has told me some strange stories about their doings; and, at the very moment I am writing, horses are being withdrawn, names scratched, forfeits declared, and bets pronounced "off," with a degree of precipitation and haste that shows how little confidence exists amongst the members of the ring. As for myself, not knowing either the course, the horses, nor the colors of the riders, I take my amusement in observing--what is really most laughable--the absurd effort made by certain small folk here to resemble the habits and ways of certain big ones in England. Now it is a retired coach-maker, or a pensioned-off clerk in a Crown office, that jogs down the course, betting-book in hand, trying to look--in the quaintness of his cob, and the trim smugness of his groom--like some old county squire of fifteen thousand a year. Now it is some bluff, middle-aged gent, who, with coat thrown back and thumbs in his waistcoat, insists upon being thought Lord George Bentinck. There are Massy Stanleys, George Paynes, Lord Wiltons, and Colonel Peels by dozens; "gentlemen jocks" swathed in drab paletots, to hide the brighter rays of costume beneath, gallop at full speed across the grass on ponies of most diminutive size; smartly got-up fellows stand under the judge's box, and slang the authorities above, or stare at the ladies in front. There are cold luncheons, sandwiches, champagne, and soda-water; bets, beauties, and bitter beer,--everything, in short, that constitutes races, but horses! The system is that every great man gives a cup, and wins it himself; the only possible interest attending such a process being whether, in some paroxysm of anger at this, or some frump at that, he may not withdraw his horse at the last moment,--an event on which a small knot of gentlemen with dark eyes, thick lips, and aquiline noses seem to speculate as a race chance, and only second in point of interest to a whist party at the Casino with a couple of newly come "Bulls." A more stupid proceeding, therefore, than these races--bating always the fun derived from watching the "snobocracy". I have mentioned--cannot be conceived. Now it was a walk over; now a "sell;" now two horses of the same owner; now one horse that was owned by three. The private history of the rogueries might possibly amuse, but all that met the public eye was of the very slowest imaginable.