THE EARL OF WILTON. 



When, on Monday the 7th of March 1882, Thomas 

 Egerton, second Earl of Wilton, passed away in the 

 eighty-second year of his age, there was, I think, a general 

 feeling that the final link which bound our generation to 

 that galaxy of sportsmen which shed a lustre over five 

 decades of this century was severed. Lord Wilton, the 

 sometime ' Admirable Crichton,' the best all-round 

 sportsman that England had seen since George Osbald- 

 eston, was the last of that grand old school of which Sir 

 Tatton Sykes, Lord George Bentinck, George Payne, 

 General Peel, the Earl of Glasgow, and Admiral Rous, 

 were such brilliant exemplars. But, distinguished as he 

 was in many branches of sport. Lord Wilton was greatest 

 in the hunting-field, and for that reason he deserves a 

 high place in the Valhalla of the Chase. 



The second son of the first Marquis of Westminster, 

 by Eleanor, Lady Egerton, only surviving daughter of 

 the first Earl of Wilton, the subject of my sketch was 

 born at Millbank House, Westminster, on the 30th of 

 December 1799. He was sent to school at Westminster, 

 and completed his studies at Christ Church, Oxford. 

 In 1 814, whilst he was yet a boy at school, he in- 

 herited the title and estates of his maternal grandfather. 

 Seven years later he took the name of Egerton, in place 



