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.
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