60 FAMOUS KACING ]\IKN. 



it, Hawke, you've winged me ; but give me your hand." ' They were 

 great rival whips, and some ill-blood on that point, as well as on 

 election matters, brought about this impromptu appeal to arms. 



About this culminating period of liis fortunes, we are told that 

 Colonel Mellish never opened his mouth under £'500 in the ring, and 

 the southern division caught the betting infection. Even old Elwes, 

 the miser, was kuown to eat nothing all day but a piece of crushed 

 pancake (which had been made at JNIarcham two months before, and 

 which he would persist in declaring to be " as good as new "), and 

 yet to stand £'2,000 for Lord Abingdon in a match ; and the Sjjort- 

 ing Magazine could write two months })revious to the Fyldenei' St. 

 ■Leger, " There is little doubt that upwards of one million of guineas 

 have been alreadij laid." That fatal I^eger gave the final blow to 

 Colonel Mellish's career. In the following December his stud was 

 sold, and he himself left England and went as aide-de-camp to Sir 

 Rowland Ferguson during the Peninsula War. There he distinguished 

 • himself by his gallantry and intelligence, so much so, indeed, as to 

 win the high ajjproval of the Duke of Wellington himself, who, in 

 one of his dispatches, specially praised Colonel Mellish for the un- 

 daunted manner in which he encountered danger, the quickness with 

 which lie rode, and the precision with which he delivered his orders, 

 never making the slightest mistake in any moment of hurry or confu- 

 sion-. Unfortunately, however, JMellish could not restrain his passion 

 for gambhng, a vice to which the duke was es})ecially opposed during 

 a campaign, and the consei^uence was he was advised to throw up his 

 })ost and return home. During his absence liis uncles had under- 

 taken the management of his terribly embarrassed affairs. His fine 

 ancestral estate of Blythe was sold to ^Ir. Walker, the great iron- 

 founder of Rotherham. Out of his splendid property only one small 

 farm was left to him, Hodsack Priory, to which he retired, and 

 thenceforward lived the (^iet life of a country gentleman, accepting 

 his altered fortunes with an equanimity which Warren Hastings 

 himself could scarcely have surpassed. Fortunately for him, his 

 wife, one of the daughters of the Marquis of Lansdowne, had a 

 comfortable income of her own settled upon herself, and they were 

 enabled to live in the enjoyment of such rustic amusements as 

 befit the position of a country squire and his wife. The colonel 

 was a man of intellectual and artistic resources. He was an accom- 

 plished artist and musician, and in the cultivation of these refined 

 tastes he found solace for his misfortunes. But, perhaps, his greatest 

 delight was in the pursuits of the farmer and the sportsman. He 

 becaine an enthusiastic coursing man and a scientific breeder of 

 cattle. In these harmless and unexciting pursuits it might have 

 been expected that he would have attained a green old age. But 

 the excesses of his early life had impaired his constitution, and he 

 died in the year 1817, at the early age of thirty-seven. His fate 

 was certainly less melancholy than that of some " plungers " before 

 and since his time ; but, nevertheless, it was sad to see a noble 



