SIR W. H. GREGORY. 367 



Mostyn, Sir William Gregory was on the most 

 intimate terms of friendship with the noble owner 

 of Crucifix, Miss Elis, and Gaper. It seems, there- 

 fore, in the highest degree desirable and opportune 

 that I should avail myself of the permission which 

 on many occasions he accorded to me, authorising 

 me, if I outlived him, to make what use I liked 

 (when he had passed away) of the numerous letters 

 which I had received from him, and of our still 

 more numerous conversations on racing and jDolit- 

 ical subjects. During his lifetime Sir William 

 was averse from printed allusion to the Turf career 

 which he had pursued with so much zeal and 

 energy in his stirring youth. He had followed 

 racing — and to a man who carries it on as he did, 

 it seldom fails to become an all-absorbing and 

 engrossing profession — with more courage than dis- 

 cretion. About that time Irish property had begun 

 to decline so rapidly in value, that Sir William 

 Gregory's Galway estates brought him in next to 

 nothing. Nevertheless he remained on the Turf, 

 always sticking to the same trainer — William 

 Treen of Beckhampton, in Wiltshire — in the hope 

 that another Clermont or another Loupgarou 

 mio'ht arise to retrieve his shattered fortunes. 

 It was not destined, however, that such a horse 

 should again be vouchsafed to him, and his subse- 

 quent career, first as a member of Parliament from 

 1857 to 1872, and secondly, as Governor of Ceylon 

 from 1872 to 1877, proved beyond all doubt 



