THE DUKE Or^ QUEENSBEKKY. 47 



his will the duke left Dick a legacy of i:2,0()(). Old reprobate that 

 he was, he had yet a good heart. He was, at any rate, one of the 

 foremost sportsmen of liis age, and ke[)t his lionour unsullied on 

 the turf wlien an honest and upright s]:)ortsman was by no means 

 common even in the highest circles. He was 86 3'ears of age when 

 he died, on the 23rd of December, 1810, bequeathing his immense 

 fortune to Lord and Lady ^'armouth, but the dukedom died with 

 him. 



COLONEL MELLISH. 



ONE of the most startling, sensational and at the same time 

 melancholy careers on the turf, was that of Colonel Mellish. 

 He burst like a meteor upon the sporting world at the beginning of 

 the present centur}^, and like that starry phenomenon, his course 

 was as brief as it was brilliant, ending, too, in that utter darkness 

 into which all shooting stars rush and disappear from ken. The 

 sribject of our sketch came of a good old Yorkshire famil}', the 

 Mellishes of Blythe, near Doncaster, and was born in the year 1780. 

 At a very early age he was sent to school, at Eton we believe, but 

 proved himself of such uncontrollable temperament, that he soon 

 ran away, and nothing could ever induce him to put himself again 

 under scholastic discipline. Yet, like Jack Mytton, he was of such 

 good natural parts, that he acquired a better knowledge of the 

 classics than nine-tenths of his contemporaries at Eton, who sup- 

 plemented their studies there by a Univo'sity curriculum. At 

 the age of seventeen he obtained a commission in the 18th Light 

 Dragoons, but soon afterwards exchanged into the crack cavalry 

 regiment of the day, the 10th Hussars, of w'hicli the Prince Eegent 

 was colonel, and in course of time was gazetted captain of the 

 " Prince's German troop " — the ne plus ultra of fashionable soldiering. 

 His expenditui'e even then was so reckless that the prince gave him 

 permanent leave of absence lest his example should ruin half the 

 officers of the regiment. Unfortunately, young JMellish, owing to 

 the death of his father during his minority, came into full and 

 uncontrolled possession of his large pro})erty immediately upon 

 attaining his twenty-first year. And then he went the pace with a 

 vengeance. His first appearance on the turf was at Dm-ham races, 

 in the year 1801, when his Welshman, by Sir Peter Teazle, with 

 that wily jocke}', Billy Peii'se, in the saddle, won for him a match of 

 50 guineas. From that time forward he was an ardent patron of 

 horse-racing, and, had he confined himself to that sport, would 

 have added to rather than diminished his splendid patrimony, for he 

 was admitted on all sides to be the cleverest man of his day, both 

 in the theory and practice of racing. In matching and handicapping 

 he had no equal. Nor was he less conspicuous in other sports. He- 

 was one of the first whips of his age, and there Avere veterans living 



