In a nation peculiarly attached to rural sports, that, as matter of course, becomes entitled to the place of honour which diffuses the greatest portion of enjoyment to the greatest number of people. In this view, racing is well entitled to the pre-eminence which it has so long claimed, and had conceded to it; but it prefers demands of a higher nature than its mere pleasurable results. In a political sense, it is an engine of no mean importance. A state must benefit largely from an agency which exhibits its nobles promoting, at great individual cost, a sport in which all classes can participate equally with themselves, and which brings together all the divisions of society for one end and purpose--social recreation. Where shall we seek the great moral of England’s power and station?--In the wealth which commerce pours upon her shares?--In her wooden walls?--In the skill, learning, and valour of her sons? We can scarce study it in a more impressive page than that yearly spread before us at the great popular re-unions of Epsom, Ascot, and Doncaster. Let such as love such lore, then, search after it where the examination will surely reward their industry: we will take it up, abstractedly, as a pastime, and in that character look into the nature and influence of its present economy. As a treasury of art, an assembly of learning, ingenuity, and pleasure, our metropolis has many rivals--some superiors: in our rural life we stand alone. Mainly this has been brought about by--is the consequence of--a general taste for field sports. Whether the cause of morality is served by horse-racing, it is not our province to inquire. An inelegant but most _apropos_ salt-water axiom says, “every man to his post, and the cook to the fore-sheet.” Mankind, since the creation, has set its face against all work and no play, and will do so to the end of the chapter. We are of the disciples of Democritus; and, feeling in the vein, will just touch in here, merely in outline, a faint sketch of a DERBY DAY. Perhaps, with one exception alone, none of the realities of life come up to the anticipations of them; and what, you ask, is that singular deviation from the general rule?--It is a DERBY DAY. Imagine a conglomeration of two millions of souls stirred to its _penetralia_, shaken from its propriety, morally earthquaked, because of the necessity which annually requires that a certain portion of the mass (say a fortieth) should rendezvous in a neighbourhood where certain horses are to contend some two minutes and sundry seconds for certain monies, and you arrive at a general idea of something by no means in the ordinary course. The scene of this commotion is London, the majority of the actors automata that make yearly one solitary diversion (in both the word’s interpretations) from the regular cycles of their orbits. But such a Saturnalia demands a word anent its note of preparation.