i62 ECHOES OF OLD COUNTY LIFE. 



tiling like ;^i 70,000 became payable, and with this the 

 new Duke entirely freed the Wotton estate, and with 

 the surplus was enabled to purchase back in a few years 

 some of the outlying farms. The death also of his 

 mother, which grieved him greath', as he was deeply 

 attached to her, was followed, in about three years, by 

 that of her brother the Marquis of Breadalbane, who, 

 having no lineal descendants, left his nephew the Duke 

 nearly a quarter of a million cash ! Here was then a 

 climax, and a solatium for his hard-earned and laborious 

 exertions to maintain his honour and family fame 

 untarnished. 



The Duke lost the position, however, of Chairman of 

 the London and North-Western Railway, through the 

 Liverpool and Manchester school thinking that he 

 looked too much after minor details and failed to grasp 

 more extended fields of operation afforded by the large 

 manufacturing districts of the North of England, 

 Whatever may have been their ideas, I think it redounds 

 greatly to his credit that he foresaw the necessity of 

 doubling the line of railway, and it was during his reign 

 that the third line of railway was laid down, which has 

 now culminated in four lines reaching to Rugb\\ When 

 the Duke first insisted upon the laying down of a third 

 line, one of the leading engineers sneered at the idea : 

 *' like the fifth wheel to a coach," he said it would be. 



A gentleman with whom I had some connection in 

 railway matters a few years before, called on me one day 

 in i860 with Mr. Brydone, who was at that time engineer 

 to the Great Northern Railway, and wished to consult 

 me respecting a proposed line to Thame. I told them 



