08 FAMOUS KACING^ MEN. 



without further comment. Then Mr. Mostyn, seeing the negotiation 

 concluded, said very quietly, from the lower end of the table, lifting 

 his eyes for an instant from his letters — 



" ril take the lot, Bentinck, at 10,000 ; and will give you a cheque 

 before you go to the course." 



" If you please," replied Lord Greorge, and the bargain was 

 concluded. 



Ijord Beaconsfield, in his biography of Lord (feorge Bentinck, thus 

 refers to this sudden and startling abandonment of his favourite 

 sport : — 



" The world has hardly done justice to the great sacrifice which he 

 made on this occasion to a high sense of duty. He had not only 

 parted with the finest racing stud in England, but he parted with it 

 at a moment when its prospects were never so brilliant, and he knew 

 this well. He could scarcely have quitted the tm-f that day without 

 a pang. He had become the lord paramount of that strange world 

 so difficult to sway, and which requires for its government both a 

 stern resolve and a courtly breeding. He had them both : and though 

 the black-leg might quail before the awful scrutiny of his piercing 

 eye, there never was a man so scrupulously polite to his inferiors as 

 Lord (reorge Bentinck. The turf, too, was not merely the scene of 

 the triumphs of his stud and his betting-book. He had purified its 

 practice and had elevated its character, and lie was prouder of this 

 achievement than of any other connected with his sporting life. 

 Notwithstandmg his mighty stakes and the keenness with which he 

 backed his opinion, no one, perhaps, ever cared less for money. His 

 habits were severely simple, and he was the most generous of men. 

 He valued the acquisition of money on the turf because there it was 

 a test of success. He counted his thousands after a great race as a 

 victorious general counts his cannon and his prisoners." 



Among the stud thus abruptly and strangely disposed of was 

 Surplice, the winner of the Derby and St. Leger of 1848 ! It was a 

 cruel instance of the irony of fate that, after waiting and striving so 

 long to crown his achievements on the turf with the highest lionour 

 which the " sport of kings " has to bestow, he should thus, at the last 

 moment, in a fit of petulance, apparently, have thrown away, so to 

 speak, the horse that would have enrolled his name on that immortal 

 scroll of victors. How keenly he felt the blow when the triumph of 

 Surplice came may be gathered from the following striking passage 

 in Lord Beaconsfield's biography: — 



" A few days before — it was the day after the Derby, May 2oth, 

 1848 — the writer met Lord (xeorge Bentinck in the library of the 

 House of Commons. He was standing before the bookshelves, with 

 a volume in his hand, and his countenance was greatly disturbed. 

 His resolutions in favour of the colonial interest, after all his labours, 

 liad been negatived by the Committee on the 22nd and on the 24th ; 

 his horse. Surplice, whom he had parted with among the rest of his 

 stud, solely that lie might pursue, without distraction, his labours on 



