62 TALES OF THE TURF AND THE CHASE. 



amusement, like Master Sly, he ' let the world slide.' But for 

 all that he was not an uncharitable or wholly selfish man. He 

 gave one of his estates to a number of superannuated Roman 

 Catholic devotees who had sought refuge in England from the 

 horrors of the French Revolution ; he made a present of a very 

 large sum of money to Lloyd's, for the relief of wounded sea- 

 men ; and his conduct to all who had ever in any way minis- 

 tered to his pleasures was singularly generous. Old reprobate 

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

 the foremost sportsmen of his age ; and he kept his honour 

 unsullied on the Turf at a time when an honest and upright 

 sportsman was by no means common, even in the highest circles. 

 He was eighty-six years of age when he died, in 1 8 lO, leaving 

 his enormous fortune to Lord Yarmouth. His death gave as 

 much surprise to his contemporaries as that of Charles Ma- 

 thews to the men of our day. He seemed an evergreen ever- 

 lasting, and proof against all the attacks of the grisly monarch. 

 At the news of his decease even that precious old lunatic, 

 George HI., was amazed, and, in the words of Peter Pindar,' 



' The king — God bless him ! — gave a ivhew ! 

 "Two dukes just dead — a third gone too ! 

 What, what ! could nothing save old O., 

 The Star of Piccadilly ?" ' 



