38 THE POST AND THE PADDOCK. 



is their best epitaph, we may safely aver that a more 

 brilliant quartet of horsemen than Buckle, Chifney, 

 Robinson, and Harry Edwards, never issued side by 

 side from the Ditch stables. Yorkshire was " Old 

 Harry V great battle-field, where the unvarying brilli- 

 ancy and power of his set-to and finishes not only con- 

 ferred no small lustre on the Fitzwilliam, Kelburne, 

 and Houldsworth jackets, but terrified Tommy Lye 

 at times to that degree, that he confided to a friend 

 he would " quite as lieve ride against Sattan." The 

 club wits were not wide of the mark when they said 

 of Buckle, in 1823, 



" For, trained to the turf, he still stands quite alone, 

 And a pair of such Suckles was never yet known " 



as a faultless build for horseback, and forty years of 

 incessant practice, had combined to make him perfec- 

 tion. When he sent over his whip by the hands of 

 Mr. Tattersall, in 1826, to become a challenge prize 

 in Germany, he was enabled to add, by way of com- 

 mentary, that he had " won five Derbies, two St. 

 Legers, nine Oaks, and nearly all the good things at 

 Newmarket" In his sixty-first year, he wasted to 

 7st. 81bs. for his favourite Rough Robin ; but though 

 he required no " walks" latterly, he kept himself in 

 such fine form, by constantly riding from Peterboro' 

 to Newmarket and back, a distance of ninety-two 

 miles, to say nothing of trials, that he was quite the 

 first four- mile man of his day. Sir Tatton Sykes 

 and Mr. Osbaldeston were his only compeers in horse- 

 back endurance ; and, strange to say, he rode his last 

 race, on one side of the Ditch, only an hour before 

 Mr. Osbaldeston completed his great 200-mile match 

 on the other. With his saddle strapped for the last 

 time round his white cape coat, " the governor" can- 

 tered off to cheer " The Squire," as he finished on 

 Tranby, but made some remark to the effect, " that 



