236 Ikinas ot tbe HDunttno^J'ielC) 



enthusiastic testimony to his high character. ' A noble 

 fellow ; always straight,' was the verdict of his old friend 

 Budd ; whilst his great rival and only equal as a shot, 

 Captain Horatio Ross, writes thus of him in 1867: 'As 

 a general sportsman, as one who went in at everything 

 in the ' ring,' he was the best man England has pro- 

 duced during the present century ; and I could not say 

 more in his praise. Besides, however, his high qualities 

 of pluck, endurance, and skill in all manly sports, he was 

 a generous, kind-hearted, hospitable man. I lived with 

 him for a good many years, and I can say that during 

 all that time I never heard him speak harshly or in any 

 unkind way of any human being ; on the contrary, he 

 seemed always anxious to make excuse for those who 

 were absent' 



It was on the ist of August 1866 that George Osbald- 

 eston passed over to the majority, in his seventy-ninth 

 year, leaving behind him such a reputation as an all- 

 round sportsman as no man has ever won before or is 

 likely to win again. 



