MR. JAMP:S merry. 107 



himself put the question. Mr. Merry rose to answer. " It is quite 

 true," he said, " that having sent a horse of mine to the Continent, 

 I (lid so far forget myself as to conform to the customs of the 

 country in which I was staying, and allow him to start for an 

 important prize on the Sabbath-day." ( " Oh, oh ! " and loud groans 

 all over the place). *' But, gentlemen, I must add that before I 

 thought about the day on which the race was to be run, I had 

 backed my horse very heavily with the French, and I won their 

 moueij and brought it back to spend in atdd Scotland." And 

 straiglitway all true Scots in that room felt their hearts touched, 

 and waving their bonnets exultantly over their heads, the assembly 

 joined in three cheers for the canny Member and then dis})ersed, 

 singing " Auld Lang Syne." 



Mr. Merry, as we have already stated, was a singularly ill- 

 informed man on all subjects, except the breeding and running 

 of race horses, and many stories are told of his astounding 

 ignorance. One of the best autlienticated is the following : On 

 one occasion he was " heckled" on the hustings as to his opinions 

 on the vexed questions of Church Rates, the Law of Hypothec and 

 sundry other abominations m Scottish eyes. He had been pre- 

 viously coached by his secretary as to the answers he ought to 

 give, and was just opening his mouth to reply when a voice 

 exclaimed, " An' hoo aboot the Decalogue, mon ? " For a moment 

 ^L-. ]Merry looked perplexed, the word was unfamiliar to him, but 

 supposing that it must be one of the questions as to which he had 

 been duly instructed what to say, he boldly avowed in his broad 

 Lowland Scotch dialect, "I'm for abolishin' them a'." And the 

 late Lord Valentia, with whom Mr. Merry was intimate in his 

 youth, used to relate that when "the (rlasgae body," as he called 

 himself, paid his first visit to London, "no workhouse child was 

 ever more ignorant of the world and its ways." But he must 

 have had a rich latent vein of shrewd north-country common 

 sense in him even then, or he would never have developed 

 into the sagacious and successful breeder of racehorses which he 

 afterwards became, or have attained that high position among the 

 worthies of the turf, which his contemporaries have assigned him, 

 and which we doubt not posterity will endorse. 



ADMIEAL EOUS. 



SINCP] the turf first became a national institution in England, 

 no one man has exercised over it such a commanding influence 

 as Admiral Rous. Lord Creorge Bentinck, indeed, was great in his 

 way, and we have already admitted his high claims to veneration as a 

 sincere and successful reformer of the abuses which abounded in the 

 racing world of his day, but much as sportsmen owe to him in that 

 respect, the feeling with which he was regarded by his contemporaries 



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