88 FAMOUS EACING MEN. 



breeches, and the mahogany tops. To the last the old baronet was 

 "a hardy Norseman;" and "The Druid" tells us that it was his habit 

 to get up at five in the winter, shave himself with cold water, and 

 wash his head. He would then go into the library on the side of the 

 house looking into the park, with the church peeping out among the 

 embosoming woods scarce a bow shot from the house, as pleasant a 

 pastoral scene as any in England, and walk up and down in his 

 dressing-gown, slippers, and breeches. The library is ninety feet in 

 length, and he used to calculate how many miles he walked by filling 

 his pocket with silver and depositing a piece of it on a table at one 

 end every time he had finished the return joiurney. Sometimes " the 

 ultimate array of monitors " would speak to a strong four-mile exer- 

 cise before breakfast, and this, be it remembered, when he was almost 

 a nonagenarian. He was suspected of a strong secret wish to 

 reach the age of a hundred years, and it is possible that he might 

 have done so but for an act of imprudence in his eighty-ninth year. 

 The road between Sledmere and Fimber was being lowered, and he 

 had worked very hard in his shirt^sleeves at breaking stones. His 

 faithful old servant, Eichard, brought him his ale and sandwich for 

 luncheon, and Sir Tatton sat down on a tree-root in the plantation to 

 eat it, and there fell fast asleep ; the draught brought on a chill 

 which he never got over. Two years later, in the March of 1863, he 

 had an attack of gout, which rather amused him than otherwise, 

 seeing that his family had been subject to it and here was he, the 

 premier sportsman in England, only caught by it after he had passed 

 his ninetieth year. When it quitted him, eight days before his 

 death, dropsy rapidly set in, and the sad whisper, scarcely believed 

 at first, went over Yorkshire : " Sir Tatton is dying ! " Some hoped 

 he might rally as he had done before, but the once iron frame had 

 found its conqueror. He lay almost insensible, but breathing heavily, 

 from Tuesday to Saturday, and then his brave old heart went out 

 with the dawn. " Keen and shrewd, yet in many aspects of his 

 character a Sir Eoger de Coverley," Sir Tatton Sykes had lived an 

 ideal patriarchal life ; he was everybody's adviser that wanted advice, 

 everybody's friend that wanted help; he was his great county's pride; 

 his name was a proverb and a household word over all the broad acres 

 of Yorkshire ; and at his funeral three thousand persons were present 

 to pay the last tribute of respect to as fine an English gentleman as 

 any age has seen. 



THE EAEL OF ZETLAND. 



THOMAS DUNDAS, second Earl of Zetland, will long be remem- 

 bered by all English sportsmen, and especially by horse-loving 

 Yorkshiremen, as the owner of ttie ever-famous Voltigeur, whose name 

 IS familiar as a household word to all who are interested in equine 

 annals. It is indeed mainly, if not entirely, as the fortunate 



