turf, or joint-stock banks that have shut up at short notice, come in as
the scapegoats. Very willing hacks they are, too, railways especially, and
so frequently ridden, that it is no easy matter to discriminate between the
real and the fictitious loser.

But though we are able to contradict Mr. Sponge's losses on the turf, we
are sorry we are not able to elevate him to the riches the character of a
fox-hunter generally inspires. Still, like many men of whom the common
observation is, 'nobody knows how he lives,' Mr. Sponge always seemed well
to do in the world. There was no appearance of want about him. He always
hunted: sometimes with five horses, sometimes with four, seldom with less
than three, though at the period of our introduction he had come down to
two. Nevertheless, those two, provided he could but make them 'go,' were
well calculated to do the work of four. And hack horses, of all sorts, it
may be observed, generally do double the work of private ones; and if there
is one man in the world better calculated to get the work out of them than
another, that man most assuredly is Mr. Sponge. And this reminds us, that
we may as well state that his bargain with Buckram was a sort of jobbing
deal. He had to pay ten guineas a month for each horse, with a sort of
sliding scale of prices if he chose to buy--the price of 'Ercles' (the big
brown) being fixed at fifty, inclusive of hire at the end of the first
month, and gradually rising according to the length of time he kept him
beyond that; while, 'Multum in Parvo,' the resolute chestnut, was booked at
thirty, with the right of buying at five more, a contingency that Buckram
little expected. He, we may add, had got him for ten, and dear he thought
him when he got him home.

The world was now all before Mr. Sponge where to choose; and not being the
man to keep hack horses to look at, we must be setting him a-going.