178 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



from the Orkneys to Kensington in the severe winter 

 of 1864-5, arriving at home, in the snow of a 

 February night, with fourpence in his pocket, on the 

 back of a Highland garron, which he had bought 

 for £"] lOi-., Httle surprise will be felt that he never 

 recovered from the effects of the journey. For four 

 years he was unable to lie down, and at night was 

 packed in an armchair. During this last painful 

 period of his life he regularly wrote sporting and 

 agricultural leaders for the Daily News, then mainly 

 owned by Mr. Robinson and Mr. Labouchere, who 

 would have poured liquid gold down his throat if 

 it had been possible to keep him alive. But it was 

 not to be. To use his own expression, all the wheels 

 were down, and after the spring of 1870 he passed 

 away. The Hon. Francis Lawley, to whose admir- 

 able book on The Life and Times of the Druid I, in 

 common with many sportsmen, am deeply indebted, 

 applies this epitaph to him — 



" No pearl ever lay under Oman's dark water 

 More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee." 



It is a comfort to know that his dying bed was 

 soothed by the unwearied ministrations and tender 

 solicitude of his wife, by the constant affection of 

 his devoted friend Mr. John Thornton, and by the 

 generosity and kindness of the present Sir Tatton 

 Sykes, for, as Mr. Lawley has written of him, he was 

 truly the most unselfish, courageous, modest, con- 

 scientious, and pure-minded of men. 



" The touch of a vanished hand, 

 The sound of a voice that is still." 



