31 MAY 1930, Page 15

A Hundred Years Ago

THE " SPECTATOR," MAY 29-ra, 1830.

FACING THE ENEMY.

An anecdote is current, that the King, still alive, occasionally, to what used. to interest him before his illness, inquired what portrait was placed opposite to his own, at the exhibition of Sir Thomas Lawrence's. pamtings, now open. The courtiers were compelled to inform their master that his Satanic was vie-d-vie to his Britannia Majesty. The King happily relieved them from their embarrass- ment, by remarking, that they ought to have made the Duke of Wellington face the Enemy."

ErsoM RACES. •

The runs at Epsom this year were superb, and would have been more so, had it not been for the showery weather. The Derby went in the way that most of the calculators, always excepting the losers, thought it would.

STEAM CARRIAGES.

One of this most ingenious of contrivances was exhibited on Tuesday on the New Road. Nothing could exceed the smoothness, security, and ease, with which its motions were accompanied. There were five ladies and a gentleman as passengers, and two others as guide and foreman. Almost no smoke was perceptible, and the horses on the road seemed not in the slightest degree alarmed when the carriage passed them.