12 EARLY YEARS. 



known to my father and to my father's contem- 

 poraries. His Grace possessed so many admirable 

 qualities, both as a landlord and as a patron of the 

 Turf, that I deem it my duty to rescue some of 

 them from oblivion ; and all the more so because 

 the influence of great territorial magnates is pass- 

 ing away in this country not, as I venture humbly 

 to believe, for our country's good. It will perhaps 

 be remembered by some of my readers that in 

 one of his letters to ' The Times,' Admiral Rons 

 remarked that during his long experience of the 

 Turf he had known but two men the fourth Duke 

 of Portland and the fifth Earl of Glasgow who 

 raced from pure disinterested love of sport, and 

 without harbouring a single mercenary thought 

 in their breasts. From what I have heard, there 

 never yet was a supporter of horse-racing who took 

 more pleasure than did the fourth Duke of Port- 

 land in breeding, rearing, and racing his own 

 thoroughbred stock. For that purpose he kept a 

 few well-selected brood mares at Welbeck Abbey, 

 where he caused their produce to be broken as 

 yearlings, and to be exercised and trained as two- 

 year-olds until the Doncaster September meeting 

 was over. At the end of September his Grace 

 engaged some four or five good jockeys to come to 

 Welbeck in order to try his two-year-olds, the best 

 and most promising of which he sent to New- 

 market to be trained by Richard Prince. His 

 Grace deemed it to be a matter of prime import- 



